Vacancy tax in Poland. There is a proposition

On Tuesday, the Left Club presented the details of their proposed housing strategy, which is intended to respond to the problems of the Polish market. – Today, every third family in Poland is in the so-called rent gap, they have too little money to be creditworthy and too much to qualify for a municipal or social apartment – said Magdalena Biejat, deputy speaker of the Senate, at a press conference.

The program was discussed in more detail by the Deputy Minister of Development and Technology. As Tomasz Lewandowski explained, work on the reforms was divided into strategic and rescue activities. – The rescue measures are already ready, there is a draft bill that was prepared by my predecessor, deputy minister Krzysztof Kukucki – emphasized Lewandowski.

The above-mentioned draft amendment to the Act on social forms of housing development assumes, among others: increasing the maximum limit of state budget expenditure in 2025 social and municipal construction program and setting a limit on expenditure for the program in the years 2026-2030 (gradual increase in expenditure, ultimately in the amount of PLN 10 billion in 2030). – We hope that these rescue regulations will be adopted in the coming months without unnecessary delay – said the deputy head of the Ministry of Energy and Technology.

The strategic activities proposed by the club consist of five components. Lewandowski pointed out that the first of them concerns municipal construction, within which the group wants to increase funds for the renewal of municipal resources, limit the privatization of social rent and reform the rental policy of local governments.

Another club idea is to create Social Construction Fundwhich will “contain funds for non-repayable grants to finance apartments for rental services and loan funds for long-term low-interest loans.” – Here we also propose to our coalition partners the introduction of a simple rule: PLN 1 allocated for any form of subsidies to the lending campaign for the purchase of apartments will have to be associated with the allocation of PLN 1 to the social construction fund – said Lewandowski. He added that the chairwoman of the Left Club, Anna Maria Żukowska, will be responsible for this component.

As part of the strategy, Lewica also proposes establishing a Central Register of Premises, which will collect data on the use of each private residential premises. – Thanks to this data, we will want to provide local government officials with the competences regarding possible implementation tax on vacant buildingsbut also (…) the regulation of short-term rental – explained the deputy head of the Ministry of Energy and Technology. He indicated that MP Daria Gosek-Popiołek would be responsible for this area.

In turn, the spokesman for the New Left, Łukasz Michnik, is to deal with the area of ​​support for housing cooperatives. “We have 3.5 thousand housing cooperatives, it would be imprudent if we did not reach for these resources. We want to launch good systems of financing housing programs implemented by housing cooperatives, primarily aimed at tenant apartments,” Lewandowski elaborated.

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Dorota Olko, an MP, will be responsible for the last component. – We'll come back to the idea flipper taxbut structured slightly differently, based on the structure of income tax – emphasized the Deputy Minister of Development and Technology. – We (also) want to propose and will start a discussion with the Polish Bank Association so that mortgage loans operate only on the basis of a fixed interest ratebased on a uniform contract template – he added.

Lewandowski also announced a series of events where the proposed solutions will be discussed in more detail.

In March, the Left submitted a bill that was intended to discourage the so-called flippers for real estate speculation. The proposal assumed a change in the tax on civil law transactions (PCC) to 10% when the apartment is sold within one year of its purchase. The PCC rate for people selling an apartment within two years of purchase was to be 6 percent, and before three years – 4 percent.

Moreover, the project assumed the introduction of an additional tax for property owners who purchase a third or subsequent residential premises within a period of five years counted from the end of the year in which they purchased the first apartment. The Sejm rejected the bill in the first reading.