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The committee of the civil legislative initiative „Rzeszowski Komitet Antyspekulacyjny” wants the so-called permanent vacant units 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, spokesperson for the Podkarpackie District of the Together Party, announced at a press conference on Wednesday, the civil legislative initiative committee „Rzeszowski Komitet Antyspekulacyjny” 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 apartments.
“We want the City Council to adopt a directional resolution that obliges the city mayor to tax vacant units – 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 stated.
He explained that in Rzeszów, as in any other city, there are two rates of property tax. One is PLN 1.24 per square meter for apartments, and the other is PLN 35.36 for commercial premises, meaning the tax for an apartment with an area of, for example, 50 square meters would increase from PLN 62.50 to PLN 1768 annually.
He specified that this is not a new tax, but the application of an existing rate to premises that do not serve a housing function. “In our opinion, if an apartment is not used for residential purposes, meaning 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 premise,” he emphasized.
He clarified that the **goal of this initiative is not to seek additional funds for the city budget, “as the revenue from this tax will not be very significant,” but to curb housing speculation, “to make the use of apartments as a speculative commodity unprofitable.”**
Preneta mentioned that such a solution has already been introduced in Katowice and Kraków, while, for example, Warsaw rejected such an idea. “We are submitting this project to the City Council and hope it will be put on the agenda. (…) We count on the Rzeszów councillors to 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 unit is inhabited or vacant, he replied that in Katowice, letters are sent to institutional owners, not private ones, requesting justification as to why a given unit should be taxed as an apartment and not a commercial premise.
“Apartment owners must prove that the units are used for residential purposes and are not solely capital investments, i.e., they must justify why they chose the lower tax rate,” he explained.
Young people participating in the briefing emphasized that holding onto apartments that could be put on the market and increase supply leads to rising housing prices, which in turn results in higher prices for both buying and renting apartments. (PAP)
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