After realising an error in their ways, the civic body has refunded Rs 186 crore to 5,000 property owners and is in the process of clearing extra arrears of another 3,000 in the next 15 days. The refund comes after residents and activists complained of the additional amounts they had to pay owing to the transition from rateable value system to the capital base value.u00a0

According to the rateable value system the property taxes were calculated on based on the maximum amount of rent fetched by a property in a year. The BMC, however, switched to the capital value based system, which calculates property taxes depending on present market value of the property. The system came into retrospective effect from April 1, 2010, which meant that people had to pay three year’s tax in arrears.