This workshop convenes property tax experts, scholars, and public officials for a week of presentations by experts combined with case studies and reports from countries where the tax has been recently implemented. The course presents and promotes best practices for property tax administration. It offers a forum for exchange of information and experiences among international experts and colleagues from countries that are considering or have introduced value-based taxation.
The curriculum, developed and presented by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, focuses on property valuation as well as fiscal, legal, political, social and administrative issues. It includes discussion of real property markets, system development and management, market value and mass valuation methods, enforcement of the property tax, and taxpayer education and services. Throughout the program, there are interactive sessions with faculty and participants and participant activities.
A theme running through this year’s course is recognition of the reality of legal, governmental, technical resources, and social environments that are not always ideal for administration of the property tax. Case studies will feature countries where the property tax has been successfully introduced and maintained despite such limitations.
The following topics will be covered during the workshop:
The property tax revenue model
Real property markets and market value
Mass valuation for real property taxation
System planning and development for a value-based property tax
Property and market information systems and data
Market analysis and valuation methods
Mass valuation technical standards
Valuation of unique properties (e.g., agriculture, infrastructure, mining)
Legal framework for value-based property taxation
The role of one-time charges on property transfers
Property tax collection and enforcement
Political and social issues related to taxation of property
Who should attend
This course is designed for policymakers and senior level officials responsible for developing and implementing market value-based taxation of real property. Depending on current needs and reforms, these individuals may work with legislative bodies, local governments, or ministries developing policies and laws, or with central and local tax administrations responsible for valuation, tax implementation, and provision of services. This course is also appropriate for officials responsible for real property taxes, information systems, such as land cadasters, valuation of real property for tax purposes, government finance, economic development, or land policy. It should also be of interest to scholars of public finance and taxation.
Your contributions
Participants are requested to prepare a written report in English describing the existing taxes on land and buildings in their country, anticipated plans for or status of implementation of value-based taxation, and any specific issues for the faculty to address during the course. The guidelines for the country reports will be sent to those who plan to attend. The country reports should be sent by email to the Center of Excellence in Finance one week prior to the workshop.
It is our intention to make the course as participatory as possible, and to include discussion questions and case problems for participants. Participants will be requested to make brief comments about the situation in their countries when the specific course topics are discussed, and to identify particular challenges, problems, and solutions for which the faculty and other participants might offer guidance and information.
Faculty
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
The course is organized and under the direction of Joan Youngman, Senior Fellow, Chairman of Department of Valuation and Taxation, and Sally Powers, Fellow, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, USA.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a non-profit and tax-exempt educational institution established in 1974. Its mission is to study and teach land policy, including land economics and land taxation. The Institute takes a wide-ranging approach to studying land and tax policy that recognizes the effects of globalization and urbanization on land uses, land markets and fiscal decentralization. In Central and Eastern Europe, we work with officials from the public and private sectors to offer guidance on land and tax reforms for countries in economic transition.
Additional information about the Lincoln Institute and its programs is available on the website www.lincolninst.edu
Semida Munteanu is Program Manager in the Department of Valuation and Taxation at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where she manages programming and research on international land-related taxes. She is currently coordinating work on a fifty-state survey of property taxation in the United States. In 2003, she received her B.A. in Economics and English from Wellesley College, where she studied public economics and public finance. Semida is a native of Bucharest, Romania.
Sally Powers, is a Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. She is a Project Manager and Property Tax Consultant with Deloitte Consulting, LLP., an international consulting firm. She has managed property tax projects in Kosovo, South Africa, and the US Virgin Islands, and served as an advisor in Bosnia and Macedonia. She has been Business Advisor to a project to integrate property tax administration systems for the County of San Diego, California. She has served in professional positions in Massachusetts assessing offices for the cities of Boston, Newton, Brookline, and Cambridge, where she was Director of Assessment and Chairman of the Board of Assessors. She has been a speaker and teacher on mass appraisal and on property tax administration for the International Association of Assessing Officers and for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. She has served on the Board of Trustees of The Appraisal Foundation. In 2011 she received the IAAO (International Association of Assessing Officers) international award.
Joan Youngman, is Senior Fellow and Chairman of the Lincoln Institute’s Department of Valuation and Taxation. She is an attorney, scholar, and author of numerous articles and books concerning land and building taxation and valuation. She has undertaken international research and educational work for the World Bank, the OECD, the International Monetary Fund, and the Harvard Law School International Tax Program. She is the author of Legal Issues in Property Valuation and Taxation, Cases and Materials (2006), a co-author of State and Local Taxation: Cases and Materials, American Casebook Series, (9th edition 2009), and is co-editor of the books Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on the Property Tax (2010), Erosion of the Property Tax Base (2009), and Making the Property Tax Work – Experiences in Developing and Transitional Countries (2008).
Tambet Tiits, FRICS, M.Sc., is Director and C.E.O. of Baltic Property Experts (BPE Kinnisvaraekspert), Tallinn, Estonia. He has been a leader in land taxation and valuation in Estonia for more than 15 years. He was Manager of the State Land Survey at the time of Estonia’s independence and was the department director in the new National Land Board responsible for land tax valuation. Following implementation of the land tax in 1993, he formed his own real estate advisory and consulting service. His firm now has regional offices throughout Estonia and in each of the Baltic countries. It provides valuation services to the National Land Board for land tax revaluations. He has served as Chairman of the Estonian Association of Appraisers and was elected to the Board of The European Group of Valuers’ Association (TEGoVa). He has made presentations on the Estonian land tax at a number of international conferences and has co-authored a chapter on “Land Tax in Estonia” in The Development of Property Taxation in Economies in Transition; Case Studies in Economies in Transition, ed. Jane Malme, Joan Youngman, World Bank Institute (2001).
Dr. William J. McCluskey joined the University of Ulster in 1986 where he is presently Reader in real estate and valuation. He was a Visiting Professor of Real Estate at the University of Lodz, Poland in 1996 and a Professor of Property Studies at Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand in 2001-02. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Technology in Malaysia. Prior to joining the University of Ulster he worked with the Valuation Office in London and the Valuation Office in Northern Ireland where his main responsibilities involved the valuation of all types of property for property tax purposes. His main professional and academic interests are in the fields of real estate valuation and more specifically landed property tax systems, fiscal policy, computer assisted mass appraisal modeling and the application of geographic information systems. He has been involved in a number of international projects advising on ad valorem tax issues in Jamaica, Northern Ireland, Bermuda, Poland, Philippines, Kosovo, Tanzania and South Africa. His publications include journal papers, authored books, edited books, and he has been a plenary speaker at a number of international conferences.
Dr. W. Jan Brzeski, FRICS, cofounder of the European Property Institute (Krakow), has been involved in Poland's economic reforms since their inception in 1989, focusing on the real property sector including taxation. He has also served as the deputy mayor of Krakow, and as a senior urban specialist at the World Bank. He has been an advisor on property and urban reforms to many transition and developing countries. He has collaborated with the International Property Tax Institute (Canada), the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation (UK), and the Association for Local Economic Development (Poland), and with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy since the early 1990s, teaching at their affiliated International Center for Land Policy Studies and Training in Taiwan. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (UK) and Senior Partner of REAS Residential Advisors (Poland), and holds professional licenses in property valuation, brokerage, and management. He has spoken at numerous conferences and seminars, written extensively on real estate, urban development, and property taxation, and co-authored a chapter on Poland in The Development of Property Taxation in Economies in Transition; Case Studies in Economies in Transition, ed. Jane Malme, Joan Youngman, World Bank Institute (2001).
Riël C.D. Franzsen occupies the South African Research Chair in Tax Policy and Governance in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He holds a doctorate in law with a thesis on South Africa’s real estate transfer tax. He also holds a master’s degree in creative writing. He has acted as policy advisor in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean on behalf of various entities, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, on especially property tax issues. He has been an instructor for property taxation courses offered on behalf of the IMF and on behalf of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the International Property Tax Institute (IPTI) and has authored or co-authored numerous conference papers, journal articles and book chapters on land and property taxes. Most recently he has co-authored a chapter, “Property Taxes in Metropolitan Cities”, in the 2013 book Metropolitan Government Finance in Developing Countries, edited by Bahl, Linn and Wetzel and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He also co-authored two chapters in A Primer on Property Tax: Administration and Policy edited by McCluskey, Cornia and Walters.
