THE Cyprus Land and Property Owners Organisation (KSIA) said yesterday that any changes to Immovable Property Tax system should be simple and fair.
MPs are set to vote on amendments to the law at the plenary session of the House on 17th January, but the government has yet to submit a revised set of proposals for their consideration.
KSIA also questioned why a decision on the new system had to be taken so urgently as any new tax regime would not be implemented until September and that “the immediate signing” of the EU bailout agreement was “doubtful”.
The island’s Interior Minister, Eleni Mavrou, repeated that that the government is making every effort to avoid taxing the average home owner, such as those with a house on half a building plot or a large apartment.
“If the €40,000 threshold based on the values of 1980 is finally adopted we more or less maintain the groups included in the existing law and increase the number of contributors,” she said.
(Immovable Property Tax, which is based on the Land Registry’s assessment of the 1980 value of a property, is a confusing concept to most foreigners as it has no parallel in other EU countries. At the present time, the majority of registered property owners are exempt as the 1980 value of their property falls below the €120,000 threshold at which this annual tax becomes payable.)
There used to be a comparable system in the UK when I lived there. It was called the rates. Houses were given a ratable value, based on things like the number of bathrooms and windows and proximity to local amenities. The local council calculated the amount it needed to raise each year and set a rate of so many pence per pound of ratable value to arrive at what each household must pay. This worked quite well, but it was felt to be unfair and difficult to understand so the Tories replaced it with the Poll tax, which resulted in riots by the normally placid UK home owners.
Couldn’t agree more Costas A.
‘A confusing concept to most foreigners’?
‘No parallel in other EU countries’?
You can say that again!
Why make something simple, when you can complicate it to the point where it doesn’t actually work, except sometimes in an ‘artful’ and selective way?