As part of the government’s thrust to devolve powers to localcouncils, the task of valuing property for the collection of the municipal property tax (IMI) is to be included. The Tax Authority will be responsible only for collecting the money.
This measure appears in the Government's draft law on the decentralisation of powers to municipalities which was published on Wednesday.
With the responsibility for the valuation of properties, councils also will be in charge of hiring the appraisers who determine the tax value (Valor Patrimonial Tributário) and will handle requests for revaluation and any complaints by owners.
The law will be discussed in Parliament on March 16th and, once approved, the Government will make changes to the IMI code within 180 days.
The president of the Union of Tax Workers, Paulo Ralha, is pleased with this change and believes that this measure will not bring about any significant changes in the amounts of IMI collected. Ralha says that national rules, such as the reference cost per m2, "do not give great scope for discretion," a statement that few owners will believe.
The National Association of Municipalities has not yet commented as it wants to carry out an "in-depth analysis" of how the new responsibility will be resourced as only two weeks ago the president of the Association, Manuel Machado, was under the impression that property valuations would not be transferred to councils.
In the first version of the draft law covering the transfer of powers to councils, the Government indicated, but only in a vague way, that councils were to have something to do with valuations, but offered nothing concrete.
In the version of the new legislation, sent to Parliament on Wednesday, the government gave more details and clarified that property valuations would be the responsibility of local councils. The current complaints procedure is that property owners disagreeing with valuations can order a reassessment from Finanças, at their own cost.
If the revaluation is the same as the original one, which it is likely to be as both are likely to be carried out by the same Finanças-appointed assessor, the property owner is stuck with the cost of the second survey.
This puts off many people who think their property valuation (VP) is too high, but view the complaints system as being unfair as they are likely to be saddled with the cost.
With councils destined to handle complaints and reassessments, this procedure seems set to continue.
There has been no opinion yet from consumer groups such as Deco, but many owners already fear that councils will use the valuation procedure to push up the taxable value of their local property stock in order to benefit from a higher rates income.
