Taxes and compensation

Updated property tax and other surprises for owners

Maryana Torocheshnikova: The property of Russians, according to various estimates, is about 82% of the country's total housing stock. And in 2020, all these owners await many important innovations. To deal with what to wait for residential real estate owners in Russia in 2020, lawyer Artem Sidorov helps me.

Almost 80 million people in Russia are direct owners of housing. All of them, with rare exceptions, are obliged to pay tax on this property, and very soon each home owner will receive an updated tax notice that can and shock someone, because now the apartment tax, for example, can make the amount quite tangible to the family budget.

Until 2015, property tax was calculated based on the inventory value: on average in Russia, it did not exceed 500 thousand rubles, therefore, the amount of tax on real estate did not cause discontent. But in 2014, the government decided that it would be more correct to calculate taxes based on the cadastral value of objects: it is as close as possible to the market, and in some cases even exceeds it. The transition period lasted several years, but from January 1, 2020, all regions should be considered taxes in a new way, based on the cadastral value of the object.

Artem Sidorov: In general, the cadastral value should be as close as possible to the market, plus minus 20%. Sometimes it happens that it is overstated, and several times. And the inventory value is still coming from Soviet legislation, it is determined by a complex scheme, taking into account the age of the building, wear and other things. The inventory value of the new house, for example, will already be closer to the market, and if you take the inventory value of the apartment, which is located, say, in the old house in the center of Moscow, there can be many times more market value than an inventory.

What is the essence of this reform that has been going on for several years? Tax rates, in principle, are reduced by themselves, some deductions, benefits are made, but at the same time, as the base, it is the cadastral value that is taken. In some cases, the tax may not change if this is a new house, and in some cases increase even two to three times. It all depends on how all this was considered.

The government decided to calculate taxes based on the cadastral value of objects: it is as close as possible to the market, and in some cases even exceeds it

Correspondent: In order not to be surprised at the amount of property tax, let's calculate how much you have to pay for your house, apartment or room in Russia in 2020. Let's start with good news: not the entire area of your real estate is taxed on property. To reduce the amount of payments, the government proposed to subtract part of the square meters from the total area of the room. For houses, this is 50 square meters, for apartments - 20, for rooms - 10. For example, if you own a house with a total area of 80 square meters, then you will pay the tax only 30. In an apartment of 60 square meters, 40 will be taxed in tax. And if you only have a room with the size of, say, nine square meters, then you don’t have to pay a tax on this property.

Now we will figure out the so -called progressive tax rate scale. According to this scale, the more expensive your housing, the more money will have to be given to the state treasury. So, if the price of your real estate does not exceed 10 million rubles, then the tax on it will be 0.1% of its cadastral value. For real estate from 10 to 20 million rubles will have to be given 0.15% of its cadastral value. 0.2% will go to the state treasury for the room worth from 20 to 50 million rubles, 0.3% - for property from 50 to 300 million rubles. Further, the rate grows significantly, for real estate more than 300 million rubles will have to pay tax - 2% of its cadastral value. This scale does not take into account the owners of the apartment. They, regardless of the cost of the premises, will have to give 0.5% of their cadastral value.

So, we calculate the amount of a house on a house with an area of 80 square meters and worth 4 million rubles. We remember that thanks to the deduction of 50 square meters, we will pay tax for only 30 square meters of the house. One square meter in this case costs 50 thousand rubles. This means that in order to find out how much the tax will be accrued for, it is necessary from the total cadastral value of the house - 4 million rubles - to subtract the cadastral value of 50 square meters, that is, 2.5 million rubles. It turns out 1.5 million rubles - this is the amount on which the tax rate depends, in this case it is 0.1%, since the house costs no more than 10 million rubles. We receive property tax - 1,500 rubles.

Another example. Apartment with an area of 60 square meters and worth 12 million rubles. Tax - 0.15% of the cadastral value - only 40 square meters from the total area will be taxed. From the total cadastral value we subtract the cost of 20 square meters and get the amount taxed - 8 million rubles. Property tax will be 12 thousand rubles.

If a person acquires an apartment for 12 million rubles, then property tax, regardless of the area of the apartments, will be 0.5% of the cadastral value, that is, you will have to pay 60 thousand rubles.

Maryana Torocheshnikova: So, in the first three years, the accrual of property tax will be carried out taking into account the lowering coefficient - 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6. However, already since 2023, all lowering coefficients will be canceled, and it will be necessary to pay in full, so it makes sense to find out how much experts estimated your housing and whether there are grounds to reconsider its cost. After all, the costs of real estate owners will also depend on this.

Artem Sidorov

Artem Sidorov: It makes sense to dispute the cadastral value if you have any large non-residential premises, industrial premises. If this is an apartment, as a rule, when you consider the economic effect, it makes no sense to dispute the cadastral value, because even the valuation services will cost more than the tax for two years. These are usually elite living quarters.

Maryana Torocheshnikova: Regional authorities can establish their tax rates, but not exceeding the basic more than three times. And the basic tariff for the apartment, for example, 0.1%. Perhaps the least lucky were the owners of apartments in old houses located in prestigious areas of cities, since their inventory and cadastral value can differ tenfold, especially taking into account a large meter, which is valid for an increasing rate. The owners of the apartments were not lucky: if housing is not listed as an apartment, room or house, then you should pay 0.5% of its cost to the treasury.

But there are some tax bastards. Since 2020, if you decide to sell the only housing only three years after its acquisition, you will be exempted from paying tax on individuals.

Artem Sidorov: According to the general rules, in the event that a citizen owns the premises for five years, he can sell it without paying tax, that is, he is provided with a full tax deduction. And now they introduced another benefit: if a person has the only dwelling, or if not the only one, but he bought the second no later than 90 days before the sale of this premises, it was established that the deadline for receiving the maximum tax deduction will be three years. If earlier you had to wait five years to sell the purchased apartment without paying tax, now, if this is your only place of residence, you need to wait only three years.

For those who receive housing as a gift, since 2020 a single procedure for determining the tax base for personal income tax is introduced

Maryana Torocheshnikova: For those who receive housing as a gift, since 2020 a single procedure for determining the tax base for personal income tax is introduced.

Artem Sidorov: Now it is clearly established that the cost of an apartment when determining the tax base is taken from the cadastral value as of January 1 of the year when donation is performed. Say, if you were given an apartment, and its cadastral value is 10 million, then you pay a 13%tax, that is, 1 million 300 thousand. Previously, it was possible to use 70% or try to present any other market value, and now it is more clearly established that the calculation is from the cadastral value. If you give an apartment to a close relative or spouse, then there will be no tax at all.

Maryana Torocheshnikova: By the way, Russians who surrender housing, in 2020, officials want to withdraw from the tax shadow: this was announced by the deputy minister of construction and housing and communal services Nikita Stasishin. According to him, the landlords want to be obliged to register on a special platform integrated with the Federal Tax Service. According to approximate assessment, today more than five million apartments are rented out in Russia. If their owners will conscientiously pay taxes from the income for rent, this will bring 200 billion rubles to the budget annually, officials say.

Another important change awaits conscientious acquirers of housing. From January 1, the law began to operate, according to which the state is obliged to pay compensation to those who lost the apartment due to scammers.

Artem Sidorov: This is a very important change in legislation. There were a lot of cases when people purchased an apartment, a room or other property, and then it turned out that the person who sold this real estate to them did not have the right to alienate it. And people sued for a long time, the actual owner filed a lawsuit, and in many cases, even if a conscientious acquirer did not know that he could not buy this real estate, it still was withdrawn from him. Yes, he had the right to recover losses from the person who illegally sold this real estate, but, as a rule, he could no longer have money. Especially if it was a crime, fraud, it was very difficult to recover money. And it turned out that in many cases a person was left without an apartment, with an executive sheet in his arms, according to which he could not recover anything, and, accordingly, was forced to somehow re-resolve his housing issues. Compensation was provided, but it was in a truncated form and no more than a million rubles, which in any case did not cover the loss of a citizen, and then very often they refused to pay it.

Correspondent: Living dead, fictitious wives and dummy relatives ... Do you know for sure who to acquire your secondary? The Ododvortsev family, for example, was sure that in 2004 she bought an apartment from the legal owner - Olga Maltseva. According to legend, a few years before the sale of Maltsev married Yuri Stepanov, who had been living in this apartment for a long time, but did not privatize it. They privatized the apartment much later, on the eve of the sale of the Ododvortsev family.

By this time, Stepanov died. Later it turned out that Maltseva was not even married to the deceased, the marriage certificate was fake, which means she privatized and sold the apartment illegally. But the Department of Housing Policy noticed this only after the apartment conscientiously purchased the Ododvortsevs. The officials considered that the apartment still belongs to the state. The district court left the living space for the one - - - - -play, but the court of the second instance decided that the apartment needed to be returned to the city, and the family should be evicted.

The history of the Ododvortsevs is not unique, with a similar case, Alexander Dubovets reached the Constitutional Court of Russia. He also became a victim of apartment scammers, and in 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled: if authorities made a mistake in performing their functions, they cannot take the living space from conscientious buyers. In the history of the one - - - - -law Department of Housing Policy (now the Department of Residential Property), he did not notice for seven years that citizen Stepanov, who lived in an indifferent apartment, died. The fact that later the apartment was privatized with the help of a fake marriage certificate was also not noticed immediately. But in all the mistakes of the Department, one -Dovortsevs remain guilty: the family still threatens eviction. In December 2019, they filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court.

Maryana Torocheshnikova: Now, for similar cases, Russian law provides for a clear mechanism for the payment of compensation from the state.

The situation when apartments are illegally privatized, occurs quite often. There are a lot of fraudulent schemes

Artem Sidorov: We need to get a court decision on the recovery, take a writ of execution, take it to the bailiff. And if within six months the amount will not be recovered completely or partially, then either the entire amount, or the difference that was not recovered, is already covered by the state. Our only evidence of ownership is state registration, and state registration bodies must perform a legal examination, study documents. And since it turns out that these bodies illegally registered housing, a legislative decision was made that the state reimburses losses.

A citizen can choose - to recover at the cadastral value either by market. The market value can be determined already during the court, on the basis of an appraisal report. At the same time, you still need to go to the court: the defendant is the Russian Federation, which will pay funds from the treasury.

The situation when apartments are illegally privatized, occurs quite often. There are a lot of fraudulent schemes. For example, some lonely pensioner is dying, and his apartment should move away to the state, but there are people who fake documents, that they are supposedly relatives, inheritance, and after some time they sell an apartment. And then it turns out that this was fraud, a criminal case is opened, and the authorities are already applying for the seizure of the apartment.

The practice in such cases was contradictory: sometimes the courts nevertheless seized apartments, sometimes left, depending on the situation. But now, even if such an apartment is taken, the Russian Federation will have to pay compensation to the citizen.

Moreover, specifically for such cases, there is a provision in this new article of the law on state registration, and it directly states that in this case the law has retroactive force. If such a situation arose earlier, even before the entry into force of this law, if the citizen was previously seized from the citizen, he can now apply for compensation. This is important.

In principle, this is how a small percentage of contracts is disputed, less than 1%, however, these are still thousands of people. And now, at least, they will receive money and will be able to purchase some other real estate.

Maryana Torocheshnikova: And the next news concern not only the owners, but also the tenants. From July 1, "smart" electric meters will begin to install in residential buildings throughout Russia. They themselves will transmit readings and even completely block the supply of electricity if the owner of the housing has arrears for electricity payment. Moreover, such devices must install energy suppliers independently and at their own expense.

Artem Sidorov: This has not yet been worked out to the end, but most likely people will not pay anything, and the counters will be installed at the expense of the relevant companies and replace as the expiration of the operating life.

Smart meters are convenient in that in automatic mode they transmit readings directly to the operator, who on this basis issues an account. It will no longer be necessary to submit data or score on the Internet every month, it will be known in advance how much electricity is spent. In addition, it is assumed that there may be a function of automatic shutdown of energy supply in case of its long -term non -payment and the corresponding decision.