Mass assessment of agricultural land will start in 2009

The mass assessment of the agricultural land will begin in 2009, Info-Prim Neo reports. Olga Buzu, the head of the assessment division of the Agency for Cadaster and Land Relations, said that about 3 million of agricultural plots will be assessed overall, according to preliminary data. But this number varies from day to day because the consolidation of land goes on. In order to start assessing a new category of property, the Agency’s employees are taking preparatory measures. There will be launched several pilot projects that will enable to fix time norms and other assessment indexes. Some 60,000 industrial facilities, 49,000 garages of construction cooperatives, 68,000 plots of agricultural (fruit-vegetable) associations and the constructions located on their territory have been assessed last year for being taxed. The data about the market value of this property were sent to the State Fiscal Inspectorate. The Fiscal Code says that commercial facilities, garages and plots of agricultural (fruit-vegetable) associations and the constructions located on their territory must be taxed at their market value from 2009. Buzu has said that it is not known yet what the tax rate for this kind of property will be and how much the tax paid by taxpayers will rise, but the taxes will be probably different from those put on the apartments and houses from municipalities and towns, according to their market value. The proposal must be submitted by the Ministry of Finance. Asked how soon the data about the value of apartments and houses from municipalities and towns will be updated, Buzu said that the assessment is a costly process for the state budget. “It is three years of the mass valuation of apartments and houses from municipalities and towns. The current price of this property is much higher than the price fixed during the assessment. But even the highly developed countries cannot afford to update the data every year. I think that we should update them once in 5-6 years,” Buzu said. She added that the market value of the houses from rural areas will be assessed during the last stage of the program of assessing property for taxation that will be completed in 2011.