The Kolkata Municipal Corporation will waive 100% of accumulated interest and penalties on outstanding property tax for eligible taxpayers who clear their dues by March 31, 2027, under a six-month waiver scheme announced by the civic administration.
Municipal commissioner and administrator Smita Pandey announced the decision on Thursday evening, saying the scheme would take effect from Friday. The waiver is expected to benefit 386,288 property taxpayers across Kolkata.
According to the civic administration, the scheme will cover properties under government, private and individual ownership, as well as properties under government control. Taxpayers who want to settle their outstanding dues in instalments will also be allowed to do so, Pandey said.
The concessions will vary according to how a property is used. For properties used for both residence and business, taxpayers will receive an 80% waiver on interest and a 99% waiver on penalties. For properties used entirely for commercial purposes, the interest waiver will be 70%, while 99% of the penalty will be waived.
The waiver will apply only if the outstanding municipal property tax is paid within the scheme period, which ends on March 31, 2027. The announcement comes ahead of the proposed Kolkata municipal election on November 28 and follows a period during which property tax collection was affected by administrative and technical disruptions.
The civic administration said municipal employees had remained occupied for nearly 10 months with work related to the special revision of electoral rolls, the Assembly election and post-election social welfare programmes. In addition, the corporation’s online server reportedly remained out of service for more than three weeks, forcing several residents who had come to pay their property tax to return without completing the process.
The corporation said its total outstanding property tax currently stands at Rs 6,854.29 crore. This includes Rs 3,138.76 crore in principal tax, Rs 3,314.13 crore in interest and Rs 400.38 crore in penalties. While the corporation will forgo the interest and penalty amounts covered by the scheme, the civic administration expects the waiver to help recover a substantial portion of the principal tax owed.
Similar property tax waiver schemes have previously been introduced during the tenures of former Kolkata mayors Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Firhad Hakim. The latest scheme has received approval for implementation following a proposal from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, according to the report.
Residents and commercial property owners seeking the concession will need to clear their eligible outstanding property tax within the six-month window. The municipal administration’s stated deadline for availing the waiver is March 31, 2027.
