Today, in the eyes of the taxman, the value of a small house with four rooms is higher than that of a larger house divided into three rooms. This is the main flaw that the land registry reform intends to correct over the next five years. The number one innovation will be the transition from the criterion of the number of rooms to that of square meters, but many other variables will also come into play to calculate the value of Italian properties (which are more than 63 million).
"Collaboration is essential - said yesterday the number one of the Revenue Agency, Rossella Orlandi, during a conference on the Land Registry organized by the Order of Architects –. The system works if everyone takes responsibility and the rules are applied without exceptions. Please be aware that if we don't cooperate, no one can do it."
The new Land Registry will distinguish between two uses: ordinary it is special. In the first case, the cadastral categories will drop from 26 to 8, grouping the homes into just three categories (multi-family or mixed residential buildings, single-family residential buildings, isolated or terraced multi-family homes and typical local homes) and erasing the distinction between elegant, ordinary and popular.
The intended use special, however, will include as many as 18 cadastral categories (from hospitals to schools via hospitals and more).
Finally, as regards the so-called unproductive properties (churches, for example), will continue to be exempt from taxation.
THE COMMISSIONS
At the beginning of November, the Council of Ministers approved the implementing decree which kicks off the work of the new census commissions: 106 at the local level (which will take office within a year of the entry into force of the decree) and one central, in Rome, with supervisory duties. All the commissions are divided into three sections, responsible respectively for the land register, the urban register and the revision of the appraisal system of the buildings register.
NEW CRITERIA…
The main task of the commissions will be precisely the revision of the parameters on which the cadastral estimates are based. For homes in multi-family or mixed-use residential buildings, there will be at least seven variables: square metres, building typology, urban context, state of conservation, presence of a lift, view and floor level.
The ultimate goal is to rewrite not only annuities, but also assets. For this purpose they will be taken as reference the market values of the previous three-year period, or those of the period 2012-2014, given that the reform starts this year.
The figures that are still taken into consideration today have been calculated at the end of the eighties and now too much time has passed to think that those numbers are still realistic, not only because house prices have changed profoundly, but also because the owners may have intervened on the property, perhaps greatly increasing its market value with a renovation .
…AND NEW TAXATION
The path of the reform, according to the tax authorities, will end in 2019 and the numbers thus obtained will become the tax base for the payment of property taxes. The administration aims not to change the tax revenue overall, balancing increases and decreases.
To avoid new imbalances, it is obvious that the government will also have to recalibrate tax rates. On the other hand, the reform of property taxation should arrive well before 2019, therefore, when the reform of the Land Registry is completed, Imu and Tasi should be merged into a single "Local Tax".
