The civic initiative committee „Rzeszów Anti-Speculation Committee” wants the so-called permanent vacant properties in the capital of Podkarpacie, which are not inhabited by tenants, to be taxed the same way as commercial premises. The draft resolution on this matter was submitted to the City Council on Wednesday.
As Paweł Preneta, spokesman for the Podkarpacie District of the Together party, informed at a press conference on Wednesday, the civic initiative committee „Rzeszów Anti-Speculation Committee” was established in February this year. Its aim is to submit a resolution to the Rzeszów City Council, referred to as the tax on dead flats.
We want the City Council to adopt a directive resolution that obliges the city mayor to tax vacant properties – those permanent ones held by developers, investment funds, or private investors solely to keep them empty, to profit from their increasing value, and not to use them for housing purposes – and to tax them the same way as commercial premises, Preneta informed.
As he explained, in Rzeszów, as in any other city, there are two rates of property tax. One is PLN 1.24 per square meter for residential properties, and the other is PLN 35.36 for commercial premises, meaning that the tax on a flat of, for example, 50 sq m would increase from PLN 62.50 to PLN 1768 annually.
He clarified that this is not a new tax, but the application of an existing rate for properties that do not serve a residential purpose. „In our opinion, if a flat is not used for residential purposes, i.e., it serves solely as a capital investment, is kept empty for two, three, four years only to be sold at a profit, it should be taxed like a commercial property,” he emphasized.
As he explained, the purpose of this initiative is not to seek additional funds for the city budget, „because the revenues from this tax will not be very significant,” but to curb housing speculation, „to make using flats as a speculative commodity unprofitable.”
Preneta stated that such a solution has already been introduced in Katowice and Krakow, while Warsaw, for example, rejected such an idea. „We are submitting this project to the City Council and we hope it will be debated. (…) We hope that the councillors of Rzeszów will stand on the side of the residents, not on the side of investors and developers,” he added.
When asked how the city authorities would verify whether a given property is inhabited or vacant, he replied that in Katowice, letters are sent to institutional owners, not private ones, requesting justification why a given property should be taxed as residential and not as commercial.
Flat owners must prove that the properties are used for residential purposes and are not solely capital investments, i.e., they must prove why they chose the lower tax rate, he explained.
Young people participating in the briefing emphasized that holding onto flats that could enter the market and increase supply leads to an increase in housing prices, which in turn results in higher prices for both purchasing and renting flats. (PAP)
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