Although I am not an exaggerated supporter of Polish taxes, I am more and more often convinced of the concept of cadastral tax. Poles urgently need him. What dampens my enthusiasm is the indolence of the legislator, who would almost certainly have introduced the tax in the wrong way.
How to like Polish Taxes?
The idea of taxes is interesting, while many years of national experience with the implementation of this concept have led us to the inevitable conclusion that taxes are bad. For here, instead of throwing ourselves on many important issues with our joint efforts, we are deprived of a lot of money, and in pathological cases even half of our salary is confiscated. What’s more – additionally disguising the taxes collected from us in the form of RTV subscription, excise duty or sugar tax, often in a dishonest way, and – even worse – in a complicated way. For example, I would very much like to give you 25% of everything I earn. But let it be over. No declarations, ZUS contributions, subscriptions, transmission fees and complicated regulations. One page of A4, instead of tax bills expanding at a pace that could eat galaxies.
The second problem with taxes is that money is taken from the most sensible administrators – their owners. When buying a smartphone, we read articles about it, watch movies, go to MediaMarkt to play with it a bit at the exhibition. The official buys tens of thousands of smartphones with public money, which he will not even use. He doesn’t care if he chooses well. It is the same with building roads, investing in the army, hiring subordinate officials, etc.
So we live in a country where taxes are constantly increasing, they are very complicated, and the citizen is in a lost position in confrontations with tax offices, although they do not avoid mistakes or contradicting positions. Worse, we can all see that this money is being spent badly, and in recent years very badly – politicians are buying power by bribing part of the public, rather than investing in the country’s development.
Cadastral tax is what Poles need
Of course, I hope that no one is planning to consider the above paragraphs in the category of some “introduction to the theory of tax”. However, I wanted to outline how heavy my heart is to write an article in which I may be calling for the introduction of a new levy.
Returning to the tax theory. The one in Poland serves only one purpose: to contribute to the state budget. Sometimes people try to attribute noble goals to him, such as the sugar tax, which supposedly was supposed to slim down Poles. It does it so fantastically that it affects the price of honey, and before it was lamented by the Lawlessness and several other media outlets, light drinks were to be taxed with it. Taxes can be attributed to lofty slogans, but ultimately it comes down to one thing – to take even more jobs from working people, to fund the state budget, and on the way give some money to the wife or a skiing instructor.
Of course, the cadastral tax is not needed to fund the state budget. Its role should be purely deterrent. More specifically, a major deterrent to real estate investments.
Young people have nowhere to live
Every day I read articles on the Internet about galloping real estate prices (not surprisingly, due to the government’s economic policy, Poles are currently losing money the fastest in Europe – inflation is gigantic and interest rates are negligible). They are preceded by analyzes that young people live with their parents, rent apartments on student conditions, several people in one apartment, or finally have some resources that allow them to rent a studio, but not to take a loan.
This problem increases and deepens. So far, the crisis caused by COVID-19, although there are many indications of it, has not yet launched the housing market for the less wealthy – and it is not known if this will happen in the near future.
Something has gone wrong, because I look around and see that my own apartment is no longer just beyond the reach of lazy bums reading “Capital of the 21st Century” or other losers who consider work beyond their left-wing dignity. Own apartment is slowly becoming an unattainable goal for singles, hard and honest working couples, and even people in the top 20% of earning Poland, who are terrified not only by the cost of the loan, but most of all – by the accompanying risk.
Two colleagues are talking on the tram: Why don’t you buy yourself this iPhone, after all it’s your two-week salary? Exactly – I do not think I can afford it, since it is my two-week salary. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people can, but still cannot, afford a flat, since such pleasure is their “thirty-year salary”.
Of course, housing cannot be cheap
I don’t think my own apartment is a law. Many people do not do enough to deserve such a privilege. Some are waiting for it to fall from the sky. It cannot be denied, however, that in Poland we are getting very scarred by a group of people who do not deserve a flat, with a group of people who cannot afford it, and should.
There are many reasons for this, but in my opinion one of the main reasons is that real estate has become the horse of modern magnates. The stock market is fun for enthusiasts who have watched the Wolf of Wall Street. Works of art are good for lunatics and investing in precious metals is good for green-clad gnomes. Poles, on the other hand, want to be rentiers, not only Poles, because entire buildings are also bought by newcomers from abroad, and then allocated to Airbnb, for students, for Ukrainians, and finally for the poor on credit.
We have been talking about the cadastral tax for years
So if the problem of young people is so important that all the media are buzzing about it, and the government believes that it will be easier to steal money with state social housing systems (which never work), perhaps it is worth considering some form of state interventionism that will ultimately force capital to let go of these poor properties in favor of other investment methods.
Let it be a cadastral tax, but a wise tax. One that doesn’t punish a boy who just inherited his grandmother’s apartment. One who forgives that someone wants a house in Masuria, an apartment in Warsaw and a studio apartment in Gdańsk. Because it is within the limits of the goals and life dreams of these better-off Poles, and punishing them for this type of resourcefulness would be what the state loves, but at the same time it would be a denial of freedom.
On the other hand, the cadastral tax aimed at wholesale magnates purchasing real estate could be progressive. With each subsequent apartment, starting with the third one, for example, it would increase by several percent. Even higher for real estate for businesses. The point is that it would not pay off to have 7 or 8 apartments, and apartments 5 and 6 would obviously have to be very profitable.
You can dream of benefits, but this is Poland
I do not know whether the introduction of a cadastral tax could be a recipe for young people’s problems in confronting the real estate market. Instinctively, that’s what I think. We should remember, however, that any form of this type of intervention carries a number of consequences that are difficult to predict. The money earned on the cadastral tax should be transferred directly to the low-cost construction system. Let it even be one block a year in each of the ten largest cities in Poland. But let it be. With a 20% discount for employees of, for example, poor public money. Well, I guess I’m discovering a social democrat in myself a bit too much.
However, I have no illusions. Politicians do not introduce taxes to serve the citizens, they only do it for themselves. If some form of cadastral tax actually hangs over Poland, then – I can bet – it will be idiotic. The young couple will then have to reduce their two rooms in Mokotów into a studio apartment in Wola, and apartment buildings in Krakow bought by the Norwegians will be able to move out to a bush company from Indonesia, which will avoid the new tax, and will alternately move into blocks of the state-owned developer local tops of PiS and PO.
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