Russian and foreign practice of valuating municipal real estate

The authors analyze the real estate tax system of England, France, Germany, the USA, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Chile, Singapore, the Philippines, and Japan. The following activities are proposed with the aim of creating an effective system of municipal real estate management and improving the quality of local government: to organize the smooth functioning of full and timely accounting of the municipal real estate, the introduction of an automated registry system, including legal, technical, and economic components of records; to develop scientifically based optimal management solutions on the disposal of municipal property, in compliance with the balance of fiscal, investment and socially-oriented objectives in the course of operational management, transfer in use or trust, disposition, use as the authorized capital; to develop the optimal solutions for selecting strategies for achieving maximum economic efficiency and increasing investment attractiveness of municipal property; to exercise effective control over regulatory use of municipal property (especially land resources) for its intended purpose; to organize work on reliable cadastral valuation of the property; to provide the state budget institutions for cadastral valuation established in the regions with qualified personnel from among the practicing independent appraisers; to engage independent appraisers for analysis and monitoring of real estate market with the aim of identifying pricing factors and ensuring reliable results, compliant with relevant market data; to completely eliminate the possibility of pressure by officials of local self-government bodies at the state budget institutions for the cadastral valuation to establish the desired orientations of the cadastral value. The authors propose to initiate the introduction of uniform date of establishment of the cadastral value on the territory of the Russian Federation with the aim of providing a single investment area; the establishment the tax base for land tax and property tax at the level of 50- 75 % of the cadastral (close to market) value with the aim of identifying the optimal tax base on the basis of the principles of equity and proportionality of taxation (as an experiment in several regions of the Russian Federation).