Mumbai, September 01: Slum dwellers living in semi-permanent and kuchcha structures will have to pay property tax from the next financial year. Even those residing in illegal slums will be taxed once the new system is in place.
NA Pathan, assessor and collector, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), said, “The existing property tax structure does not exempt the slums. But it has no provision for hutments to be taxed individually.
A cluster of hutments on a singular property made it impossible for the civic body to collect tax. The slum mafia that had originally grabbed the plot, vanished after selling the hutments built on it. Chasing them was futile. So, we stopped trying to collect property tax from slums.”
Over 16 lakh families in the city live in slums. According to Pathan, the BMC goal is to bring most of them in the tax net. About one lakh slum properties have been assessed so far.
The existing (rateable value-based) system computes property tax on the basis of the rent a property would have fetched in the year it was built.
In the new (capital value-based) system, the tax will be calculated unit wise, based on factors like the market value of the unit, its age of construction, nature of construction, type of use and a pre-determined tax rate. “It (the new system) will enable us to compute tax for individual slum units. Once the slums have been redeveloped, the tax structure will change,” said Pathan.
The BMC has already started mapping all properties, including slums, on the geographical information system. The process is expected to be completed in the next financial year. A seven-member committee, currently chaired by joint assessorand collector N Phansekar, has begun working on the legal framework and business rules for taxing slums and other properties.
Games politicians play
With the assembly elections coming up, the Shiv Sena-BJP combine decided to defer its nod to the new tax regime. The BMC standing committee on Monday held back its approval to the proposal, already approved by the state legislature, fearing that the Congress-NCP combine will lap up the credit of bringing about the change.
–Agencies–