In a report sent to the Office of the Government on the reasons for the increase in real estate prices, the Ministry of Construction said it would study and propose a tax policy for cases of owning and using many houses and lands to limit speculation and buying and selling in a short period of time to make a profit.
Commenting on this issue, Master Nguyen Van Dinh - Real estate legal expert said that one of the reasons for the escalation of house and land prices is the phenomenon of speculation and hoarding with the mindset of "nothing is richer than trading land", supported by banks.
This is a "VIP" customer file of the banking industry because the loans are always secured by houses and land - which are considered to almost always increase in value and have little risk.
People's investment needs are legitimate, but when this phenomenon is at a high level, it becomes speculation and hoarding of houses and land, distorting the market, causing land to be left uncultivated, and wasting resources.
MSc. Nguyen Van Dinh said that taxing houses and land is a mandatory solution, clearly stipulated in Resolution No. 18-NQ/TW of 2022 of the Central Executive Committee on continuing to innovate and perfect institutions and policies, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of land management and use.
Resolution 18 sets out the tasks and solutions: "To overcome the situation of wasteful land use, leaving land fallow, polluted, and degraded", "Prescribe higher tax rates for people who use large areas of land, many houses, speculate on land, slow land use, and leave land fallow".
Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh said that at the land auctions, the winning bids were dozens of times higher than the starting prices in recent times. Most people were more skeptical about the auction results than happy about the fact that the state budget would receive additional large sources of revenue.
The reason is that after winning the auction, the plots of land are often abandoned, in many cases forming "ghost towns". Most of these "projects" often have very low occupancy rates, even after decades of implementation, only a few houses have been built and people have moved in.
Accordingly, Master Nguyen Van Dinh said that the taxation of houses and land has a political basis in Resolution 18 of the Party but must be implemented synchronously and fairly among localities.
An important factor is the need for a database for taxation, to ensure that taxes are levied on the right subjects and to promote the effectiveness of tax policies. At this time, the exact determination of who owns this real estate has not been resolved due to the lack of a complete database and the phenomenon of having someone else take the title of the property.
However, the Prime Minister has approved Project 06 to develop applications for population data, identification and electronic authentication to serve digital transformation. The new Land Law, Housing Law, and Real Estate Business Law also mention the construction of a national database on land, housing, and real estate information; if implemented effectively, in the near future, a reliable database system can be built, which is an important database to enforce the real estate tax law after it is passed.
"If real estate is subject to tax, if we can collect information systems and databases on real estate to "attribute ownership" and see exactly who owns this property, then something that seems impossible can happen: house and land prices will decrease, even decrease sharply. Real estate speculation will be almost completely prevented. Banks will also have to look for a new customer base instead of land tycoons.
Taxation is to concretize the view that "houses are for living, not for speculation" and only then will the dream of settling down for workers become less distant," Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh emphasized.
