![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Report from Germany, Part one
Oct. 2nd, 2021 02:01 amOn Thursday evening, Professor Dirk Lohr, a German who is pro-land tax, gave a talk on property tax reform via Zoom, and I attempted to take notes. Property tax reform is needed in Germany, where assessments are based on 1964 values in the West, and on 1935 values in the East. Property taxes come to only 2% of all tax revenue in Germany, as opposed to 12% in the United States.
In 2012, different groups wanted to reform the property tax, including architects, tenants, planners, and the Friends of the Earth. Non-Government Organizations, including the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, provided support, and it still wasn’t easy. Some politicians promised homeowners and others no increase in taxes. There was a proposal for fictional rents, with a bigger tax/value ratio for poor locations than for good locations. The top level of the Green Party supported this, although lower level Green leaders wanted land value taxation. The FDP, supposedly the classical liberal party, was on the side of the land grabbers, the landed interests.
The Constitution was revised to allow the states (Lander with an umlaut over the a) to make their own tax laws, not the same as the federal model; but for agriculture and forestry, the federal model will be adopted, because it dies in with various other provisions of law, a complicated mess. Property values are to be assessed in 2022, and the new tax system to go into effect in 2025.
Bayern, or Bavaria, proposes to tax only area, not value. I think the numbers I saw were four cents per square meter of land, and fifty cents per square meter of buildings. Aside from other objections, this is likely to be a mess because the law does not clearly say how to define the floor area of buildings with balconies, loggias, cellars with meter-high ceilings, etc. Hamburg, Hesse, and Lower Saxony want to do something similar, but with a small correction for land value, correcting the tax bill by (the particular value/average land assessment) raised to the power of 0.3.
Baden-Wuettemberg has chosen a modified land value tax, with higher rates on commercial property, lower rates on dwellings. Baden-Wuerttemberg has a bad valuation system, sad to say.
To be continued.
In 2012, different groups wanted to reform the property tax, including architects, tenants, planners, and the Friends of the Earth. Non-Government Organizations, including the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, provided support, and it still wasn’t easy. Some politicians promised homeowners and others no increase in taxes. There was a proposal for fictional rents, with a bigger tax/value ratio for poor locations than for good locations. The top level of the Green Party supported this, although lower level Green leaders wanted land value taxation. The FDP, supposedly the classical liberal party, was on the side of the land grabbers, the landed interests.
The Constitution was revised to allow the states (Lander with an umlaut over the a) to make their own tax laws, not the same as the federal model; but for agriculture and forestry, the federal model will be adopted, because it dies in with various other provisions of law, a complicated mess. Property values are to be assessed in 2022, and the new tax system to go into effect in 2025.
Bayern, or Bavaria, proposes to tax only area, not value. I think the numbers I saw were four cents per square meter of land, and fifty cents per square meter of buildings. Aside from other objections, this is likely to be a mess because the law does not clearly say how to define the floor area of buildings with balconies, loggias, cellars with meter-high ceilings, etc. Hamburg, Hesse, and Lower Saxony want to do something similar, but with a small correction for land value, correcting the tax bill by (the particular value/average land assessment) raised to the power of 0.3.
Baden-Wuettemberg has chosen a modified land value tax, with higher rates on commercial property, lower rates on dwellings. Baden-Wuerttemberg has a bad valuation system, sad to say.
To be continued.
