Mumbai: All parties reject BMC’s bid to hike property tax

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A proposal to hike property tax was rejected by all parties in BMC's standing committee on Wednesday. While it had been estimated that increase in tax would be nearly 14 per cent, the proposal had received backlash from the common man as well as industrial sectors.

As per the BMC Act, property tax is revised every five years. The last revision took place in 2015 and last year's hike was deferred by a year. Last week, the administration proposed to hike tax linking it with the ready reckoner rate. This meant that the tax would not be uniform.

Corporators, restaurant owners, traders and industrialists opposed the move on the grounds that the pandemic and the lockdown had crippled businesses. The objections had prompted Mayor Kishori Pednekar to assure the masses that the hike won't be implemented.

"The corporation postponed the hike last year citing the pandemic. The condition has remained the same, then why is the corporation trying to increase the burden on common citizens?" asked Prabhakar Shinde, group leader of the BJP in the standing committee meeting. He suggested plugging leaks in property tax collections. Pending property tax in the city amounts to Rs 20,000 crore.

Following the abolition of octroi, property tax has become the largest source of income for the civic body. Ravi Raja, leader of Opposition in the BMC, demanded that the hike be postponed by five years.