Land tax payments may fail to reach target : Lao Voices

Posted by LV on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 ? Leave a Comment?

Revenue collection from land taxes and fees may not reach the targets anticipated for this fiscal year, according to National Assembly members who debated the issue last week.

Minister of Finance Mr Phouphet Khamphounvong told Vientiane Times last week that land taxes collected over the past eight months amounted to only 40 percent of the yearly plan, which was set at over 132 billion kip.

The minister said the failure was due to the delay in transferring the role and responsibility to collect land taxes from the natural resources and environment sector to the finance sector at the local level.

The National Land Management Authority (NLMA), which has been merged into the new Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, transferred land tax collection to the Ministry of Finance earlier this year.

However the transfer of this responsibility at the district level has not yet been completed, causing delays in tax collection.

NA member for Saravan province Mr Somchay Ounchit told the session that people in his province mostly paid their land tax in February, but the incompletion of the structural reform has affected the province?s revenue flow.

He urged the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Finance to bolster their cooperation to ensure land tax payment targets are reached.

He said the Natural Resource and Environment Ministry had all the information about land plots in Laos, and without better cooperation between the two ministries, revenue collection would fall short of the set target.

Finance Minister Mr Phouphet said the next thing to do was to ensure the responsibility for land tax collection was fully transferred, to enable the finance sector to meet land tax targets.

According to a government report, the revenue earned from land taxes has increased considerably since the National Land Management Authority (NLMA) was set up in 2007-08.

Before then, revenue from land tax was 41.01 billion kip and 48.68 billion for 2005-6 and 2006-07 respectively.

In the intervening period, the revenue earned from land rose to 77.95 billion kip in 2007-08 and then to more than 100 billion kip each year. In 2009-10, 131 billion kip was received in land taxes. Deputy Director General of the Land Natural Resources Research Institute, Dr Palikone Thalongsengchanh, attributed the increase in revenue to the use of a computerised system to collect land taxes and fees and the progress made in land surveying and allocation to identify the exact number of land plots in the country.

According to a survey by the former NLMA, the failure of revenue collection in past years was due to lack of information about land plots.

Some people own as many as four plots of land but told the authorities they had only one, while others tried to evade paying land tax by taking advantage of poor law enforcement.

Source: Vientiane Times

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