Mumbai: BMC sets record on property tax, collects 99.5 % of 2024-25 target

Responding to questions about the record property tax collections for FY 2023 – 2024, officials pointed to the consistent follow up from officials as well as good responses from citizens. According to Gajanan Bellale, civic assessor and collector, “Generally, every year our target for property tax collection increases by 10-12 per cent. We have been consistently following up this time. We have also ramped up attachments, recovery and notices. And we received good response from citizens.”

Senior civic officials said the BMC also collected accrued, unpaid dues of upto Rs 1,600 crore from the 2023-2024 fiscal, taking the total amount of actual property tax collected this financial year to over Rs 7,500 crore.

Bellale said the tax collection saw a dip in the previous fiscal due to delayed bill generation. “However, this year, we managed to collect the pending dues from the previous financial year of up to Rs 1,600 crore,” he told The Indian Express.

For the municipal body, property tax is among the highest sources of revenue generation, which is typically recovered by March 31. While the revenue from the property tax was previously pegged at Rs 4,950 crore for the 2024-2025 fiscal, the estimation was later revised to Rs 6,200 crore during the civic budget presented in February.

Data shows that while the BMC collected Rs 4,856 crore in the 2023-2024 fiscal, taxes to the tune of Rs 4,994 crore were collected in FY 2022-2021 and Rs 5,208 crore in FY 2021-2020. The BMC is targeting to collect Rs 5,200 crore in property tax in the 2025-26 fiscal.

The significant jump in tax collection this year comes at a time when the civic body is grappling with depleting coffers and mounting liabilities amid several big ticket infrastructure projects unfolding in the city.

Property tax is the second largest source of revenue generation for the BMC, followed by water and sewerage charges. While the civic body has suggested proposals for new taxes such as solid waste management (SWM) user fees and for commercial units in slum areas, the property tax rates in Mumbai have remained unchanged since 2015, even as the rules dictate a hike in tax rates after every five years. In 2020, the BMC deferred its decision to revise the tax rates in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the rates have not been increased ever since.

Stamp duty collected highest in a month

The fiscal year ended on a high for Mumbai’s real estate market as the city recorded over 15,603 property registrations in March 2025, marking a 10.3 percent year-on-year increase. Data furnished by the Inspector General of Registration (IGR), accessed by Knight Frank India, showed that stamp duty collections for the month also soared to Rs 1,597 crore, making it the highest recorded in a single month.

Records showed that nearly 80 per cent of the total registrations in March were accounted for by residential properties. In what made March the most active month for the city’s real estate market in the previous year, property registrations also saw a 29 per cent rise on a month-on-month basis while stamp duty collections spiked by 71 percent.

Throughout FY 2024-2025 Mumbai clocked 1,43,948 property registrations, which marked a spike of 9 per cent from the previous fiscal when 1,32,723 registrations were recorded.