Traders may have gone up in arms against the local body tax (LBT), but the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has managed to surpass the amount of entire tax collected in the previous financial year through the newly introduced tax.

According to data provided by the cess department of the NMMC, the civic body has raked in a whopping R 505.44 crore in LBT up to December 2013. This sum is larger than the entire tax collected in the previous financial year i. e. 2012- 13, when authorities collected R 420.61 crores in cess. The LBT was introduced on April 1 last year and was met with huge wave of disapproval from traders and merchants.