Confused? Soon, software will calculate your property tax in Mumbai

You will be soon able to compute your flats’ property tax online. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is developing software, which will help the homebuyers to compute their property tax at the click of a button.

Currently, there is no mechanism that tells flat owners about how their tax is calculated, unless the society starts billing them.

In many cases, if a builder or a few flat owners fail to pay the property tax on time, the entire society is sealed. The software will help the society identify individual defaulters.

Last month, the BMC asked the state department’s stamp duty and registration department to collate the data from the civic body’s property tax department. The state is also developing a data base and software collating all registered properties and mapping them on Geographical Information System (GIS). The data will be updated by the civic body with new registered properties. This along with the new software will help the civic body know new property owners and recover taxes, if any.

“At present, the registration department and BMC’s property tax department work independently. After the integration is complete, property tax will be automatically generated, which will help buyers know about their dues. It will also update new entrants,” said Sanjay Mukherjee, additional municipal commissioner, projects.

Under the property tax reforms, the BMC has also started to tax individual flats and commercial establishments that have received occupation certificate after April 1 this year. The move will help BMC avoid taking action against the entire housing society.

There are around 2,75,000 buildings in the city that are under the property tax ambit. The BMC collects an annual tax of around Rs5,200 crore from them. The BMC’s list of property tax defaulters, though, has been increasing. At present, individual flat owners submit property tax bill to the society, which is then handed over to the BMC. The civic body has sealed more than 200 properties for non-payment of property tax this year.