Vacancy tax. The Ministry was asked what was happening in this regard

At the convention in early September, the Left discussed its ideas on how to fix the real estate market in Poland. She is an opponent of government subsidies for loans and has been consistently announcing for months that if the “Startup Loan” project ever appears, she will not vote for its adoption. Instead, he is pushing the idea of ​​taxing vacant buildings.

Tax on vacant buildings – that’s what the Left wants

Włodzimierz Czarzasty announced that a project of such a solution would be presented soon and that it would be “beneficial for everyone”, both owners and tenants. However, it is difficult to imagine that this would be expected by the owners of two apartments who use one as a weekend apartment and from whom the Left will expect to pay an additional fee for this. It is not known whether the second apartment – bought as a holiday apartment or a “maiden’s apartment” in which the family does not live but keeps it, for example, for children – will be treated as vacant. Probably yes, but we will only find out from the project.

The left argues that the new tax will encourage owners of apartments that are not used on a daily basis to rent them.

– We proposed – in order to obtain funds, among others: for construction – tax on vacant buildings. We will submit such a bill as a club. This is a continuation of issues related to housing, which is truly one of the biggest problems in Poland, said Anna Maria Żukowska on Radio One.

Do we really have 2 million vacant buildings?

The Left estimates that there are 2 million vacant buildings in Poland, so the tax revenues would be invaluable. However, the weak point of this idea is the actual number of premises that can be described as vacant. Why – we explain later in the text.

The profits from the tax would go not to the central budget, but to the local government budget. The left wants them to be used to build cheap housing. Does the idea of ​​taxing unused apartments and houses have a chance to gain wider support? It is known that for now the Ministry of Finance is not working on any regulations, as we know from the response to an interpellation by MPs Sebastian Kaleta and Dariusz Matecki. In his position of September 18, 2024, Deputy Minister of Finance Jarosław Neneman admitted that “no work is being carried out at the Ministry of Finance on the introduction of a tax on vacant buildings. The Ministry of Finance is also not considering undertaking work on the introduction of cadastral tax.”

How many vacant buildings are there in Poland?

Polish regulations do not regulate what constitutes a vacant building. In order to fill this gap, institutions and organizations interpret this concept in different ways. The Central Statistical Office assumes that these are uninhabited apartments. But, for example, some foundations recognize that it is an apartment, building or premises that has not been used for at least 12 months.

In a comment for “Gazeta Wyborcza”, Małgorzata Wełnowska, senior real estate market analyst at Cenatorium, explained that in addition, when determining the number of uninhabited residential premises, the Central Statistical Office surveyors took into account data from electricity suppliers. In this way, they obtained a more reliable number of vacancies.

Therefore, the category of non-residential apartments includes both those that are actually unsuitable for living due to their poor technical condition, and those that are in good technical condition but are treated as a capital investment. If we include in these 2 million houses in the countryside, from which the inhabitants moved out a long time ago – because these houses are in terrible condition (they require renovation, they are energy inefficient) and they are located in a town where few people want to live, because children or the grandchildren of the previous owners moved to a larger center – the existence of such a premises has only statistical significance. Forcing its owners to pay tax on vacant buildings will only result in accelerating the decision to demolish them.

60 thousand municipalities have vacant buildings

The Central Statistical Office estimates that as many as 60 thousand vacancies are in the resources of municipalities. Laziness or sabotage on the part of local governments? Not necessarily. There are many apartments in the municipal resources that are in very poor condition. They cannot be inhabited and are renovated according to the financial possibilities of the municipalities. This often requires a lot of money: many of these apartments are located in almost hundred-year-old tenement houses that have practically never undergone a proper renovation.

We write more about the uncertainties regarding how many vacant buildings we actually have in the text below.