Some Aspects of Local Real Estate Taxes as an Instrument of Land Use Management

Economic and financial instruments are a very important group of tools for supporting local entrepreneurship. The broadest group among them are local taxes. Real estate taxes are considered by local governments, on the one hand, as a tool for promoting the effective development of real estate, and on the other, as a reliable source of income to the local budget.

The functioning of every tax system can be analyzed by applying different criteria. The most typically evaluated criteria are: economic efficiency, equity, transparency, collectability and revenue production. These criteria are often in conflict with one another, one of the reasons for this fact being, according to the research conducted by the authors of this paper, the base of taxation. It is generally believed that the value of real property is a much more reliable tax basis than its size.

It was our intention to verify this opinion. Having reviewed the available literature and thoroughly analyzed the Polish and Belarussian real estate tax systems, we concluded that the first of the two systems has no definite advantages over the other. For example, the ad valorem tax better stimulates intensive use of land, but, on the other hand, may negatively affect its sustainable development. The main reason for this fact is the specificity of real estate as the object of taxation. The object of taxation exists regardless of its economic state and performance, thus taxes have to be paid whether or not there is any income or profit. Given the nature and possible functions of real estate and the priorities of local authorities, the concept of just taxation is also socially relative.