The Treasury will step in to oversee the housing tax base: whether to repeat the cycle of the past

Recently, the Ministry of Finance said that it will take action and list the adjustment of the local government's housing tax base as the basis for the assessment of subsidies. It looks like it is really about to start, but in fact this has been done before, and then the Ministry of Finance deleted it itself.

[Why did the Ministry of Finance delete the assessment items before? 】

In 2014, the revised "Key Points of the Central Government's Assessment of Municipal and County (City) Government Plans and Budgets" once included "the level of effort in taxation of housing tax" as the assessment content. In the same year, local governments were also required to adjust the "standard unit price of housing structure", which had not been adjusted since 1983, to 40% to 50% of the reasonable price.

However, the Ministry of Finance itself deleted the assessment of "the level of effort in taxation of housing tax" in 2017. The Minister of Finance said that it was "considered that the local government has raised a wave of tax bases" and "phased tasks have been achieved", so it was deleted. Now Consider re-inclusion.

【Have you achieved the phased tasks of the year? 】

In fact, some local governments did make adjustments at that time, but there were no counties and cities that actively adjusted, and the Ministry of Finance did not fully supervise them. For example, Changhua County directly said in 2017 that it would freeze the housing tax for three years ( https://reurl.cc/VXlZ8b ), and boasted that it was "light tax, benefit the people, and live justice", and Taichung City is also very proud Said that his house tax adjustment is the lowest in Liudu ( https://reurl.cc/Y6p5eO ).

However, Taichung City has nothing to be proud of. Tainan City has already surpassed you. Huang Weizhe regarded the frozen housing tax increase as a political opinion during the election. He not only withdrew the time point of the increase in the past, but even gave more concessions. , let the housing tax change from 7.3 billion a year to 5 billion ( https://reurl.cc/q86bpE ), and then come out and go north and have no money to turn on street lights.

Are these three counties really living justice? The unit price of houses from 2012Q3 to 2020Q1 announced by the Ministry of the Interior increased by 48.6% in Taichung, 53.1% in Changhua and 49.5% in Tainan. In the entire western half of Taiwan, the three of you have the most growth, and the bullshit lives in justice.

[Key: Is Tax Base Rationalization a Continuing Business? 】

Going back to the measures taken by the Ministry of Finance this time, it is true that there is something better than nothing. But the crux of the question is: is "tax base rationalization" considered a continuous business, or is it a temporary measure taken out when housing prices are soaring?

From 2013 to 2014, housing prices soared. The Ministry of Finance came out to urge local governments to adjust the tax base. Then some people adjusted and others didn’t. The Ministry of Finance didn’t pay much attention to supervision. If the project is deleted, the local government will not care about the subsequent mess.

Now that house prices are soaring again in 2020, the Ministry of Finance once again said that the assessment standards should be put in. Does that mean that after a few years, they feel "OK" and delete the assessment standards again?

In 2014 and 2020, the tax base was included in the assessment, which proves that the Ministry of Finance, as the central competent authority, can promote the rationalization of the tax base. However, the attitude of the Ministry of Finance in the past was to let it go, and to make the business that should be continuously promoted like an emergency measure of "getting the house price out of control and doing it again".

With such a precedent, in addition to proposing the current measures, the Minister of Finance should also explain the nature of the business of "promoting rationalization of the tax base" for the Ministry of Finance. Will it repeat the mistake of deleting the assessment items in 2017?

Otherwise, no matter how resolute it seems now, it is just a repetition of the past reincarnation.