Developing quality training approaches for effective property tax administration

A number of countries have recently adopted real estate taxes based upon market values. In the transitional economies the state needed new systems of taxation to meet a fiscal gap. The immobile nature of property makes real estate taxes particularly important in an era of tax competition as well as to support local government. There are formidable obstacles to developing such taxes, including the need for qualified valuers. The presentation describes a project to produce an e-learning course on valuation for those involved in real estate taxation. The work included researching the real tax systems in the four countries involved, their valuation standards, including educational standards, codes of ethics, and standards for the measurement of property, the valuation methods in use, the availability of data about market prices, valuersí experiences, and the training they had undertaken. The research was used to inform the development of the e-learning course. The presentation is based upon the project RO/05/B/P/PP175018, Developing quality training approaches for property market valuation professionals for an effective property tax administration, funded by the EUís Leonardo da Vinci programme by Agentia Nationala Leonardo da Vinci. The project was lead by CRFB and the other partners in the project were ANEVAR, the Technical University of Bucharest, the University of West Hungary, CVT Georgiki Anaptixi, and Oxford Brookes University. A paper presenting the research undertaken into the tax systems was presented to the ERES Conference in London in 2007 ñ Anghel I & Grover R (2007) Opportunities and constraints on the development of real estate taxation in transitional countries.