By Saurabh Garg, founder·11 min read·Published 2026-06-11

Property tax in Hyderabad, 2026-27, paid from abroad

Hyderabad property tax is paid to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation at onlinepayments.ghmc.gov.in against a PTIN, which is 10 digits on a property assessed after digitisation and 14 digits on an older assessment. The 5% Early Bird rebate for FY 2026-27 ran from 1 April to 30 April 2026 and has closed, and it never covered arrears. The two half-yearly instalments fall due on 31 July and 15 October, and anything unpaid after the due date carries 2% a month as simple interest. This page has the slab table, the portal steps, and the four failures that hit an owner paying from outside India.

Verified against the GHMC portals on 10 August 2026, for assessment year 2026-27.

The numbers, in one table

2026-27
Portal onlinepayments.ghmc.gov.in
Identifier needed PTIN. 10 digits on newer assessments, 14 digits on older ones
Early Bird rebate 5% on the current year, paid in full in one transaction
Rebate window 1 April 2026 to 30 April 2026. Closed
Rebate on arrears None. Current year dues only
First half-year due 31 July
Second half-year due 15 October
Interest after the due date 2% per month, simple, on the outstanding amount
Residential rate 17% to 30% of annual rental value, by monthly rental value slab
Residential exemption Monthly rental value up to ₹50, which is ₹600 a year, owner-occupied
Commercial 3.5 × plinth area in sq ft × monthly rental value per sq ft
Library cess 8%
Depreciation allowed 10%

Two lines there catch owners out. The Early Bird rebate needed the whole year paid in a single transaction with no dues outstanding, so a part payment in April earned nothing. And the second instalment is due 15 October, not at the end of the financial year. An owner who pays once a year in March has been running interest for months without knowing it.

How to find your PTIN when you have never had one

The PTIN is the key to every screen. Without it you cannot see a bill, pay it, or pull an old receipt.

It is printed on any past demand notice, any past receipt, and on the assessment order issued when the property was first taxed. If the flat came from a builder, the first PTIN was often issued in the builder's name and never moved to yours, which is a separate problem worth fixing.

With no paper at all, there are three routes. The GHMC search on ghmc.gov.in returns property tax details from a door number. The payment portal at onlinepayments.ghmc.gov.in accepts a registered mobile number in place of a PTIN, which works when the number on the record is still yours. And a GHMC Citizen Service Centre or a MeeSeva Centre will look it up against the door number and the owner name over the counter, which needs somebody standing in Hyderabad.

If the record still carries the builder's name or a previous owner's, the payment will go through and the receipt will carry the wrong name. That receipt is weak at sale. Fix the name through mutation before the next cycle. The route is in the guide to khata and mutation for a remote owner.

How the tax is calculated

GHMC taxes annual rental value, not market price. The rental value is notional. GHMC fixes a monthly rent per square foot for the locality and the type of construction, and your bill follows from that figure whether the flat is let, empty, or lived in by your mother.

Gross annual rental value is the plinth area multiplied by the monthly rental value per square foot, multiplied by twelve. The residential bill is that figure at the slab rate, less 10% depreciation, plus 8% library cess.

The slab is set by the monthly rental value of the whole property:

Monthly rental value Total tax rate
Up to ₹50 Nil
₹51 to ₹100 17%
₹101 to ₹200 19%
₹201 to ₹300 22%
Above ₹300 30%

Each rate is a general tax component plus a 15% component for conservancy, lighting, drainage and water. The exemption at the bottom covers owner-occupied residential buildings with an annual rental value of ₹600 or less, which in 2026 means a small old structure and not a city flat.

Commercial property runs on a flat formula: 3.5 times the plinth area in square feet times the monthly rental value per square foot. No slab, no depreciation step. A flat you converted into a serviced office or a clinic sits here, at a multiple of what it cost you as a home, and GHMC does reassess on usage.

Plinth area means the built-up area including walls, not the carpet area on your sale deed. That gap is where a self-assessment goes wrong.

How to pay GHMC property tax online

  1. Go to onlinepayments.ghmc.gov.in and choose Property Tax Payment.
  2. Enter the PTIN. If you do not have it, use the registered mobile number option.
  3. The portal returns the property, the owner name and the dues. Read the owner name and the plinth area, not the amount alone.
  4. Check whether the figure shown is the half-year demand or the full outstanding position including arrears and interest. They are different numbers.
  5. Choose the amount to pay. Paying the full year in one transaction is the only route to a rebate in any year it is offered.
  6. Pay by net banking, debit card, credit card or UPI. The MyGHMC and MyCURE apps and MeeSeva Centres take the same payment.
  7. Download the receipt as a PDF from the receipt print option, against the PTIN. Not a screenshot of the success screen.
  8. Save the PDF into one folder, named by year and PTIN.

Paying from outside India

This is the part the local guides skip, because they have never tried to clear a Hyderabad bill from Toronto at 3am.

The OTP goes to an Indian number you no longer use

The portal keys on a registered mobile number, both as a way in and as the number that receives confirmation. When that is a number you surrendered in 2014, you are locked out of your own property. Update it before the payment window, not during it. This single item causes more missed deadlines than every other cause put together.

Foreign cards get declined

Indian municipal gateways route through domestic acquirers and reject non-Indian cards, sometimes after three screens and a long wait. Net banking from an NRO account works. UPI linked to an NRO account works. Keep one live NRO netbanking login for this job and nothing else.

The amount debits and no receipt appears

It happens. The money is seldom lost. Do not pay again. Wait 48 hours, search the PTIN, and see whether the payment has posted against it. If it has not, raise the bank reference number with GHMC and with your bank at the same time. A duplicate payment turns into a refund case that runs for months and needs somebody in the city to chase it.

Nobody is holding the receipts

The receipt is not a formality. Several years of them get asked for at sale, at mutation, and by any bank sizing a loan against the property. An owner who paid every year and kept nothing is in the same position at closing as one who never paid. One folder. One PDF per year. The same discipline applies to society dues, covered in the guide to society maintenance bills for a remote owner.

Why the receipt matters on your Indian tax return

If the Hyderabad property is let out, the municipal tax you paid during the financial year comes off gross rent before the 30% standard deduction, under Section 24 of the Income-tax Act. Two conditions attach. The tax must be paid within the year, not billed alone. And it must be borne by you as owner, not by the tenant out of their own pocket.

For an NRI landlord, rent already has TDS taken at source at a rate set for non-residents, so the return is where the money comes back. A GHMC payment you cannot evidence is a deduction you cannot claim, and on a 30% slab that is real cash. The mechanics of claiming it sit in the guide to paying India property tax from abroad.

What happens after years of arrears

Arrears do not lapse. They accrue at 2% a month, and they attach to the property rather than to the person who left the country. The bill arrives at the worst moments.

Sitting on several years from abroad, the fastest route is to pull the full outstanding figure against the PTIN as the portal shows it, pay the whole thing in one transaction, then start the name correction. Talking an interest charge down from 8,000 kilometres away with nobody in the office is not a plan.

FAQ

Do NRIs pay a different rate of property tax in Hyderabad? No. GHMC property tax attaches to the property, not to the owner's residency. There is no NRI rate, no surcharge, no exemption. What moves the rate is the monthly rental value slab, the locality, and whether the use is residential or commercial.

I missed the 30 April 2026 Early Bird deadline. What does that cost me? The 5% on the current year, and nothing else. Full payment stays open after the window. Pay the outstanding position now, because interest at 2% a month costs more than the rebate did within three months.

Is my flat taxed at a higher rate because it is let out rather than empty? The GHMC calculation runs on a notional rental value set for the locality, so an empty flat is taxed. Actual rent changes your income tax position, not the municipal demand. What does change the municipal demand is a switch from residential to commercial use.

Can my tenant or my brother pay it for me? Anyone can make the payment against the PTIN. The Section 24 deduction belongs to the owner who bore the cost, so a tenant paying from their own money costs you the deduction. If somebody pays on your behalf and you settle it later, keep the trail.

Nobody will send me my old receipts. Can I get them myself? Yes. The receipt print option on onlinepayments.ghmc.gov.in returns receipts against the PTIN, with no need for whoever made the payment. Without the PTIN, search the door number on the GHMC site first.

My PTIN is 14 digits and the portal looks different. Is that wrong? No. Older assessments carry a 14-digit PTIN and newer ones carry 10 digits. Both are valid. You can apply at a GHMC office to move an old PTIN to the new format.

If you would rather not do this every year

66 MG Road pays municipal property tax for owners living abroad, in Hyderabad and seven other cities, and files the receipt where you can find it at sale. It is part of property management in Hyderabad, and it is one of the items in the ₹20,000 Property Health Check, alongside the tax record name, encumbrance, and who is sitting in the property. We charge for that. A single question costs nothing, and so do the guides linked above.

If the bill is small and your family in Hyderabad is reliable, do it with the steps on this page. Bookmark the portal, set a reminder for 1 April, update the registered mobile number, and keep the PDFs.

Sources

Saurabh Garg, founder, 66 MG Road

Information on this page is as on 2026-06-11. Rules, rates, deadlines and government portals change without notice, so verify against the official source before you act. This page is for information only. It is not tax or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified adviser who knows your position.