TEHRAN, Iran, Apr. 19
Trend:
The Minister of Roads and Urban Development announced that the Information of the Ministry is sufficient for the number of vacant houses.
Responding to the reports on some owners efforts to set fake contracts with real estates to avoid paying taxes on vacant houses, Mohammad Eslami the Minister of Road and Urban Development said that any transaction in real estates must receive a tracking code otherwise it will be considered as a violation, Trend reports citing IRNA.
"Accordingly, any housing transaction without tracking code is invalid and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development has the tools to identify violators. With this control system, we have been able to identify 1.3 million vacant housing units and introduce them to the tax administration to enforce the law," he added
He went on to say that the housing rate is unfortunately fluctuated due to market irregularities, so if these irregularities are fixed, naturally all markets, including the housing market will be stabled.”
Eslami stressed that another reason for the implementation of the tax law on vacant houses is to prevent the liquidity injection to the housing market to turn the housing units into a capital good.
“Housing should be considered as a consumer good,” he added.
The vacancy tax law, as part of Direct Tax Reform Law, was put on the agenda in the Iranian calendar year ending March 2016 and was enforceable from the year ending March 2017, but there was little data on the number of vacant units then. The mentioned plan is mainly aimed at lowering the housing rental rate in the country. The Iranian parliament had approved the double-urgency plan of the vacancy tax law in mid-July 2020.