Owners of a third or subsequent flat or house in Poland could see their annual property levy jump from PLN 134 to PLN 3,340, under a cadastral tax proposed by the Left. The draft law would calculate the charge from the replacement value of a home and would make rates climb sharply for people holding more than two residential properties.
The bill was expected to be discussed during the Sejm sitting that has just ended, but the debate was postponed. Katarzyna Kuniewicz, head of market research at Otodom, said in comments cited by Money.pl that the construction of the tax is unprecedented. The valuation base would not come from the market: until the DOM portal is launched, it would be the replacement cost per square metre of a residential building, published every six months by voivodes.
The Left’s plan covers every flat and house, although the rate structure starts in a straightforward way. For the first and second property owned by a taxpayer, the basic rate would be 0.02 percent of the replacement value. For a typical 55-square-metre flat in Warsaw, that would give an annual tax of around PLN 134.
Third and next properties on a separate scale
The bigger progression rate would apply to the third residential property and all subsequent ones held by the same taxpayer. Whether the unit was bought or inherited is irrelevant. The rate would rise 25-fold, from 0.02 percent to 0.5 percent of the replacement value, so in the Warsaw example the yearly cost would grow from PLN 134 to PLN 3,340.
The bill also contains a mechanism linked to the duration of ownership. For each subsequent year of holding the third property, the rate would increase by another 0.1 percentage point. This annual increase could continue for a decade, until the tax reaches a cap of 1.5 percent of the property’s value.
Valuation linked to state indicators
The entire design is based on replacement value rather than market value. According to the project, valuations are to be drawn from data on the DOM portal, but since that system does not exist yet, the source would be an indicator of the replacement cost per square metre of a residential building, announced every six months by individual voivodes.
The same high threshold applies once a taxpayer owns more than two residential units, including inherited ones. The Sejm will take up the bill at a later date, after it was not considered during the sitting that has just ended.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. KPRM / Flickr.com / CC 4.0 BY-NC-ND
