Migrants urged to benefit of property reassessment

TIRANA, July 23 – At a time when migrants are rushing home to spend their summer holidays, government has reiterated its appeal on the benefits from the reassessment of property under a modest 1 percent tax. With one more month to go before the fiscal amnesty expires, Arben Qirjako, the director general of the Real Estate Registration Office appeals to all citizens to benefit from the last days of the process which has been in force since more than one year now, warning that there will be no other extensions.
“The Albanian government has extended the deadline for the reassessment of houses until the end of August. I want to appeal to all citizens to benefit of the amnesty and not remind of it in the last moments as happened previously. Last March, only two weeks before the deadline was extended, applications in the Tirana office on property reassessment reached 700,000,” said Qirjako.
The decision to extend the property reassessment only for citizens was made last March soon after the fiscal amnesty, in force for almost 1 year expired.
Finance Ministry data show businesses continued remaining indifferent to amnesty even after the three-month extension of the deadline this year. The amnesty mostly served to individuals who reassessed their property under minimum 1 percent fees, while businesses mostly ignored the amnesty fearing verification of their self-declarations by tax inspectors. Under normal conditions, the property reassessment process is made under a 10 percent tax imposed on the difference of the sale and purchase price.
Some 33,000 citizens legalized their real estate assets worth 158 bln lek paying 1.5 bln lek until early March 2012. Assets reassessed by businesses were a mere 1 bln lek while machinery and equipment at 688 mln lek. Individuals also legalized 3.1 bln lek of monetary amounts until early March 2012.
Finance Minister Ridvan Bode has earlier attributed the failure of the amnesty in force since May 2011 to lack of political consensus as the bill failed to get the opposition’s votes which would turn it into a full amnesty.
However, the key reason was that although on a self-declaration basis, businesses still face the risk of penalties for false declarations during inspections by tax officials.