I believe everyone has received their property tax bills in recent days, as the tax season has begun. However, from time to time, I hear many people post on SNS saying that this year’s property tax has become very expensive, and it seems to be growing exponentially?
In fact, the tax rate is only raised for non-owner-occupied houses. If the house is owner-occupied, the tax rate should be lowered.
At the beginning of last year, the President announced the amendment of some articles of the "Property Tax Regulations", and the Property Tax 2.0, which was officially implemented on July 1, 2014, was officially levied in May 2015.
The main purpose is to improve the property tax system and implement the so-called housing justice, by increasing the property tax burden on multiple owners who do not make effective use of the property, so as to reasonably balance the property tax burden.
Let’s not talk about those who do not own the property for now. After all, not everyone owns multiple houses, and they are the ones who are mainly responsible for the property tax increase. So we just need to focus on caring about those of us who own the property.
According to the tax rate stipulated in the proviso of Article 5, Paragraph 1, Item 1 of the Property Tax Regulations, if there is only one house in the country and it meets the "Standards for Identification of Residential Houses for Self-Residence and Public Welfare Lessors" promulgated by the Ministry of Finance, the owner or the house user who has established superficies on the land is an individual's residential house that is not rented out or used for business, and is actually used for residence by the individual, spouse or immediate family members, and the household registration has been completed in the house, it is a self-occupied house.
If a single house is set up for self-residence, the current value of the house is below a certain amount (based on the announcements of various counties and cities). The original house tax version 1.0 was 1.2% of the announced current value, and the house tax version 2.0 was changed to 1% of the announced current value. In fact, it has not become more expensive at all, but has become much cheaper.
In other words, as long as only one of you, your spouse or your immediate family member has naturalized the house in advance, and it has not been rented out or operated during the period, you can go to the IRS to apply for self-use, and you can enjoy the ultra-low 1% tax rate.
If you look carefully at the published present value of your house, you will find that it is impossible to be so cheap. This is mainly because objects on the ground will be damaged with time of use. The older the house, the less valuable it is. It is just that the housing prices have been driven up for a long time.
If the announced present value is compared with the market price, in Taipei City, multiplying it by about 15 to 20 times is roughly its current market price. In other words, if you look at those people who have posted their tax bills recently, just look at their tax amount, then ask them whether they have applied for self-occupation, and then back-calculate the tax rate and multiply it by the multiple, you can know approximately how much money they paid for the house.
So when you see those people complaining about how expensive property taxes are, you might as well try to calculate how expensive the house they bought was, and then silently say to them in your heart, they have the money to buy such an expensive house, but they still cry poor and say they don’t have the money to pay such a low tax. Don’t you think this is all very strange?
If it is just a single self-use residence, you may feel that the tax seems to have become more expensive. The main reason is definitely because you did not apply for "naturalization" and register it as a self-use residence, which led to it being directly assessed as a non-self-use residence and levied a higher tax.
If you have multiple houses, you can currently register as having a maximum of three as your own residence, but the tax amount will remain at the original 1.2%.
But there is only one column on each person’s ID card to fill in the address of the house where the household registration is moved. How can the other three houses be registered as self-used residences?
The above-mentioned "Standards for Identifying Residential Housing for Self-Residence" further mentions that if the total number of the individual, spouse and minor children is within "three households" nationwide, it is considered to be for self-residence.
That is, the ownership of the house is between you, your spouse and your minor children, forming a small family, with a maximum of three properties in the country. In addition to your own citizenship, you can naturalize the other two properties for your spouse, or your minor children, or even your immediate family members. In this way, you can have a maximum of three properties, which is a low tax of 1.2% for self-use residence.
However, the law clearly stipulates that the application period for the application of the owner-occupied residential property tax rate is 40 days before the start of the tax period, with the last day to file.
For example, if the property tax is levied in 2015, if the household registration is not established before the application deadline of March 24, 2015 (originally March 22, but postponed due to a holiday in 2015), the property tax rate will change from 1.2% to 2.6% to 4.8%, which is a maximum difference of 4 times the original self-occupied tax rate.
But many people don’t know about this at all. Although there have been calls for changes to the new tax system, the general public has not paid any attention to this current event until they encounter it. When they really received the property tax bill these days, they were shocked to find that the amount was so much different from before!
This year marks the debut of the new property tax system 2.0. The property tax payment notices that will be levied in May 2015 have also been mailed out. According to statistics from the Finance and Taxation Bureau, as of April 30, 2015, there are still more than tens of thousands of houses across the country that are eligible for preferential tax rates for self-occupation but have not yet been registered.
As this is the first year of implementation of the new property tax system 2.0, the Ministry of Finance recently announced that if household registration for owner-occupied housing is completed and the declaration period is extended to before June 2 this year, one can apply for the property tax levied at the owner-occupied tax rate for 2015.
Therefore, those who have missed the date for applying for naturalization for self-residence and have received a higher tax bill and are regretting it, should not be foolish and pay the money directly. Instead, go to the household registration office to apply for naturalization first, and then go to the State Taxation Bureau to complete the registration, and let the staff resend the revised tax bill for you to pay.
If you do not have a spouse or underage children, and want to enjoy low taxes on the extra houses, you can try to provide the houses as social housing (leasing and managing) or renting them out for public welfare purposes. In this way, the tax of 1.2% will still apply.
Everyone should have a better understanding of what social housing is. It means that the government leases houses from the private sector and then sublets them to those who meet the eligibility requirements for social housing applications.
The term "public welfare lessor" means a person who rents out a house to a tenant who is eligible to apply for rental subsidies and is the owner of the house approved by the competent authority.
Because of your selfless love, the government will use a lower tax rate of 1.2% when levying property tax to encourage everyone to reduce the vacancy rate and achieve housing justice where everyone has a house to live in.
I have a feeling that this year’s national examinations for land surveyors and real estate agents will definitely include this question. After all, this is the first time that the revised new tax rate will be levied. The key point is that it has been extended by more than two months for those who will be able to obtain naturalization in the future within the time limit and declare their residence as a low-tax residence for self-use!
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