Land information updating, a de facto tax reform.doc

Land information updating, a de facto tax reform Bringing up to date the cadastral database of Bogota Maria Camila Uribe SánchezCadastre of Bogota The mission of the Cadastre of Bogota is to maintain the city’s geographical information up to date. All parcels—of formal or informal origins—are included. From a tax perspective, the most useful part of the information that the Cadastre administers is the cadastral value of each parcel, which is the base for the property tax. This means that efforts to reduce a lag in the agency’s database will raise the base for the property tax, which property owners will perceive as a change in the rules of taxation. In the last decade, attempts to reduce the lag in cadastral information have been few and far between. This has turned recent Cadastral Updating processes into full-fledged tax reforms at the local level. Thus, these processes in Bogotá have had the same political economy dynamics of a tax reform and have come under the same public scrutiny. In 2008, property tax represented 19.8% of Bogotá’s tax revenues generating the second largest amount of resources of all local taxes, after the business income tax (ICA). This paper focuses on the Cadastral Updating Project of Bogota implemented in 2008. The study of this Project provides insights into public administration and governance at the local level, institutional reform and tax management in a developing metropolis. In the first section, the context in which the Cadastral Updating takes place is introduced. In the second section some of the technical innovations, political strategies and main results of the CUPB are described. Finally, the paper ends with a short overview of the current reform agenda and a closing remark. Cadastral Updating in Bogota Heavy reliance on fieldwork Beyond providing the base of the property tax, the Cadastre’s information must reflect the building, usage and ownership dynamics of the city. In Colombia the task of keeping this cadastral informa