CM: No property tax of residential properties up to 500 sq ft
Property tax on residential units of up to 500 square feet, located within the Mumbai municipal area limits, will be waived off, the Maharashtra government said on Saturday
Mumbai: Property tax on residential units of up to 500 square feet, located within the Mumbai municipal area limits, will be waived off, the Maharashtra government said on Saturday.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray announced the decision after a meeting with the state urban development department held earlier in the day.
The announcement comes ahead of Mumbai municipal corporation elections expected to be held next month.
There are over 1.6 million residential properties which will stand to benefit from the decision. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said that this will come into force in the financial year of 2022-23.
The BMC collects between ₹4,000 crore to ₹5,000 crore in property tax every year and the outstanding amount is usually around ₹1,500 crore. With this waiver, the civic body is likely to face an annual revenue loss of up to ₹500 crore.
The Shiv Sena had promised the waiver in the run up to the BMC elections in 2017. The party has been heading the BMC for over two decades now.
“I am giving you all the good news on the very first day of this year. We have tried to pay off the debt of the hardworking Mumbaikars by deciding to waive off property tax for homes up to 500 square feet,” CM Thackeray, who is also the Sena president, was quoted as saying in a release issued by the chief minister’s office.
“We have fulfilled most of the promises made during 2017 and today another important promise has been fulfilled,” he said.
To implement the decision, the Bharatiya Janata Party-Sena government led by Devendra Fadnavis amended the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act in 2019. The waiver would only be limited to the general component of the tax, which is 10-20% of the total amount.
The CM chaired a virtual meeting on Saturday with Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde , Mumbai district guardian minister Aslam Shaikh, Mumbai suburban district guardian minister Aaditya Thackeray, Mayor Kishori Pednekar and Chief Secretary Debashish Chakrabarty.
Chakrabarty said that the BMC has been given the power to implement the decision.
Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Saturday said: “Implementation of the waiver will kick off from the upcoming 2022-23 financial year, and property tax in entire (for all components) for flats below 500 sq ft will be waived off.”
Last year, the government clarified that it would issue property-tax bills to owners of such structures with a partial waiver. The partial waiver only included the general tax component, which is one of seven components that also include sewage and drain charges, among others, that owners would still be required to be paid.
In the current system, property tax is levied for a building. But since last year, the BMC has also started issuing property tax on individual flats. There are around 400,000 housing societies in the city.