Mumbai: BMC faces protests over property tax hike up to 40% in 2025-26 Bills
Maharashtra : The issuance of security/ad-hoc property tax bills with increased rates for 2025-26 by the BMC has raised concerns among people. The Congress party raised objections citing hikes of up to 40% in some cases and urged Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to intervene and stop it, terming it an illegal and unreasonable hike.
However, civic officials clarified that the BMC has the right to retrospectively re-evaluate properties and levy taxes based on the revised assessment policy.
Notably, the BMC is required to revise property tax rates every five years, but the last update happened in 2015-16. The revisions were postponed during 2020-21 and 2021-22 due to Covid-19 and have been on hold since then.
In 2023, the Supreme Court (SC) dismissed the BMC’s review petition against the 2019 Bombay High Court verdict that struck down some of the retrospective tax assessment rules. The apex court directed the BMC to re-assess the capital value of all properties in Mumbai and refund money to citizens who paid property tax under the capital valuation system (CVS) for 2010 to 2012.
