'High Taxes On People Holding Land And Not Having A House To Live In'

On the afternoon of March 16, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha answered questions at the meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on the issue of land speculation and land transaction tax evasion.

The Minister received many questions from delegates about tax evasion in land transactions, which is increasingly serious, but there is no fundamental solution to prevent it.

According to delegate Dong Ngoc Ba (Binh Dinh), in 2009, the National Assembly assigned the Government to research a tax policy on land speculation, in the direction that people with many houses and abandoned land would be taxed high.

Minister Tran Hong Ha replied that this issue needs to amend the regulations in the Tax Law and Land Law.

Regarding land use tax, for projects that are slow to use land at auction, according to Minister Ha, a roadmap for use must be provided and this is considered a mandatory regulation.

`Higher taxes on cases of speculation and land hoarding, because these cases do not create socio-economic value. High taxes also cause people holding land to give up. High land prices can

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment answered questions on the afternoon of March 16.

Mr. Ha cited high taxes on people who own a lot of real estate in the US, so people are very afraid of having a house that they don’t live in or rent out.

Therefore, he said that even houses, residential land, non-investment projects, or unused agricultural land… must be taxed.

Previously, in a document dated February 24 sent to ministries, branches and localities, the Ministry of Finance mentioned a number of contents to evaluate and review a number of Laws, according to the tasks assigned by the Prime Minister.

However, on March 14, the Ministry of Finance affirmed that there is no `any policy` on building a separate law on property taxation.

Meanwhile, delegate Nguyen Thi Xuan (Dak Lak) is concerned about tax evasion in land that is increasingly common, but has not been fundamentally handled.

According to Minister Tran Hong Ha, tax evasion creeps into many land transactions.

Or there are cases where land is allocated to investors for an industrial park project, but they keep it and the land price still increases.

Participating in the response, Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc added that the current regulation that only after land is allocated to investors, the State collects money is a `loophole`.

Minister Ho Duc Phoc also said that tax authorities are reviewing to collect real estate tax at the right transfer price.

According to the minister, through reviewing 85,000 sets of real estate transfer records in the first half of January, the increased tax collected was 222 billion VND.