Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 3 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

El impuesto brasileño a la propiedad es un gravamen anual administrado por los gobiernos municipales a los propietarios de edificios y tierras urbanas. Si bien los procedimientos para establecer la base impositiva y las alícuotas varían considerablemente, la base impositiva se deriva del valor en el mercado y se estandariza a través de diferentes autoridades municipales.

En la ciudad de Porto Alegre, el método tradicional empleado para tasar bienes inmuebles para fines impositivos se basa en los costos. No existen requisitos legales referentes a lapsos transcurridos entre las valuaciones, y el último avalúo general se llevó a cabo en 1991. En los años en que no ha habido valuaciones, se ha hecho un reajuste uniforme de la base impositiva según las tasas de inflación imperantes. Las alícuotas del impuesto a la propiedad son progresivas, con tasas móviles para seis niveles de valuaciones catastrales a fin de introducir un elemento de “capacidad de pago” en el sistema. El impuesto se calcula sumando cada porción del valor catastral y multiplicando la suma por la tasa respectiva para dicha clase. La tasa máxima para inmuebles residenciales llega al 1,2 por ciento.

Análisis del sistema actual

Recientemente se realizó un estudio del sistema de tributación inmobiliaria en Porto Alegre con la finalidad de examinar la relación que existe entre los valores catastrales y los valores comerciales. A continuación se resumen algunos resultados del estudio.

Nivel de tasación y uniformidad

Se encontró que la valoración media de apartamentos residenciales en Porto Alegre fue de apenas un 34 % de su valor de venta, un porcentaje mucho menor que el nivel regulativo del 100 %. Al aplicar el coeficiente de dispersión (COD) a la mediana de la relación entre el valor catastral y el precio de venta como medida de la variabilidad, se obtienen resultados que reflejan una baja uniformidad de valuación (36 % aproximadamente). En Brasil no existen normativas municipales ni nacionales para evaluar el rendimiento de las valuaciones catastrales. A modo de comparación, un nivel aceptable de uniformidad para viviendas unifamiliares en los Estados Unidos es un coeficiente del 10 al 15 %. En la fig. 1 se ilustra el amplio margen de desviación de las relaciones de valuación identificadas en este estudio.

Factores determinantes de la falta de uniformidad en las valuaciones

Se creó un modelo multivariante para estudiar los efectos simultáneos de los factores determinantes de las faltas de equidad, tanto verticales como horizontales. De esta manera fue posible identificar un gran número de factores responsables por las diferencias sistemáticas de los niveles de valuación, a saber: características del lugar, calidad de la edificación, año de construcción, presencia de ascensores, y otras variables similares. También se halló regresividad de valuación vertical.

Método de valuación

Podemos aseverar que la causa principal de la falta de uniformidad en las valuaciones es el método de costo utilizado tradicionalmente para adjudicar valores a las propiedades inmobiliarias. Algunas debilidades teóricas del método están relacionadas con la gran cantidad de simplificaciones que las autoridades locales hacen para facilitar su aplicación, y es muy posible que las desigualdades se deban a tales ajustes. Entre algunos de los problemas del método del costo figuran la desvinculación que hay entre las tablas de costos y el rendimiento del mercado de bienes raíces, y la baja correlación que existe entre las tasas de depreciación adoptadas y la reducción del precio debido a la edad, caída en desuso o deterioro de las edificaciones. Otro factor que parece haber contribuido a la alta discrepancia en las valuaciones es la falta de un control sistemático en el rendimiento de las valuaciones.

Intervalos entre valuaciones

Claramente, la reducción de la base impositiva se debe al método utilizado para ajustar las valuaciones inmobiliarias, basado en las tasas inflacionarias existentes para los años en que no hubo valuaciones. Por ejemplo, en 1993 la valoración media de las propiedades fue de un 38 % de su valor comercial, pero sólo un 27 % en 1995.

Comparación entre las tasas de impuestos a la propiedad: efectivas y regulativas

Las tasas para propiedades residenciales son progresivas según seis niveles de valuaciones. El cálculo de la tasa efectiva se obtiene a partir del tributo inmobiliario real (sin considerar la evasión fiscal), dividido por el precio de venta. La tasa regulativa se obtiene a partir del tributo por propiedad que se obtendría si los impuestos fuesen establecidos según el precio de venta, dividido por el precio de venta. La tasa efectiva es mucho más baja que la regulativa, y su mediana representa apenas un 0,17 por ciento del precio de venta. La distribución de la carga de impuestos se ha visto afectada por los métodos impropios de valuación, no sólo por la falta de relación entre los valores catastrales y los comerciales, sino también por la clasificación incorrecta de las propiedades. Durante el período del estudio, el monto del tributo inmobiliario recaudado fue aproximadamente un 25 por ciento de los ingresos que podrían haberse adquirido si los valores catastrales hubiesen sido equivalentes a los comerciales.

Tabla 1: Comparación de las tasas de impuesto a la propiedad efectivas y regulativas

MEDIDA TASA (%)

Efectiva Regulativa

Mediana 0,17 0,75

Coeficiente de dispersión 56,87 18,26

Tasa mínima 0,02 0,29

Tasa máxima 1,18 1,15

Causas de las deficiencias del sistema fiscal sobre la propiedad inmobiliaria

La mala administración de los impuestos a la propiedad en Porto Alegre y su ineficacia como fuente de recursos podrían explicarse por factores históricos. Durante los años setenta, el gobierno central y fortunas privadas transfirieron grandes sumas de dinero a las municipalidades para complementar las recaudaciones al nivel del gobierno municipal. Como resultado, las autoridades no se preocuparon por recaudar sus propios impuestos y los contribuyentes se acostumbraron a pagar sumas insignificantes de impuestos a la propiedad. La tarea de procurar un buen rendimiento en términos de valuaciones y un nivel aceptable de equidad de las valuaciones fue relegada a un plano secundario.

Ahora bien, las crisis financieras en décadas recientes y la necesidad urgente de inversiones públicas en servicios y equipos de infraestructura han forzado a las autoridades locales a mejorar sus sistemas fiscales. Sin embargo, los esfuerzos para incrementar los recaudos y la equidad de las valuaciones provocan malestar general debido a la alta notoriedad de los impuestos a la propiedad y a la falta de aceptación por parte de los contribuyentes. Además, cualquier cambio de la base impositiva debe ser aprobado por los miembros de la Cámara de Concejales elegidos por el municipio. Siempre que se hagan planes para una nueva valuación, los miembros del concejo son responsables por apoyar sistemas que establezcan límites con el fin de proteger a los contribuyentes de bajos recursos o jubilados. No obstante, tales límites favorecen verdaderamente sólo a los sectores de altos recursos puesto que las personas de bajos ingresos o jubiladas pueden recibir descuentos según los ingresos que perciban.

Desde 1991, dos propuestas para alterar la base impositiva de Porto Alegre han sido rechazadas por la Cámara de Concejales debido a que la inflación del momento habría determinado los ajustes sobre los valores estimados de algunas de las propiedades. Sin embargo, la falta de equidad de valuación vertical conduce a que los inmuebles más costosos sean los beneficiados del deficiente sistema fiscal inmobiliario.

Recomendaciones

Para mejorar un sistema tributario es primordial conocer a fondo las fallas del mismo. El análisis llevado a cabo en Porto Alegre ofrece un mayor entendimiento del sistema, así como del grado de falta de equidad de las valuaciones y de sus causas principales. Por primera vez se midieron y cuantificaron las fallas y desventajas del sistema, se identificaron las propiedades beneficiadas del mismo y la cantidad de recaudos desperdiciados. Porto Alegre tiene ahora la oportunidad de mejorar su sistema de recaudación de impuestos inmobiliarios utilizando datos exactos y no por conveniencias políticas.

Varias medidas podrían contribuir a aumentar la equidad general del sistema de valuación, y al mismo tiempo mejorar la recaudación de recursos y el nivel de vida de la comunidad; entre ellas se tienen las siguientes:

• Revaluar las propiedades según los valores comerciales actuales. Se pueden emplear métodos de comparación de ventas a fin de avaluar inmuebles residenciales (métodos tales como valor de regresión múltiple, redes neurales artificiales o modelos de niveles múltiples [modelos de jerarquía lineal]).
• Efectuar un control sistemático de los valores de las propiedades avaluadas, incluyendo el pase de pruebas antes de la divulgación de las listas de valores, a fin de identificar y ajustar las desviaciones de la base impositiva estimada.
• Fijar valuaciones periódicas.
• Hacer ajustes de mercado a las valuaciones, basados en estudios de relación para los años en que no haya avalúos.
• Procurar una transparencia total en la administración de los impuestos a la propiedad, especialmente en lo que se refiere a la graduación de la carga impositiva, en vez de anular arbitrariamente los estimados de los valores comerciales.
• Definir niveles mínimos de rendimiento de las valuaciones, tanto en el ámbito nacional como en el local.

Lograr la equidad de los tributos inmobiliarios y mejorar los niveles de rendimiento de los servicios públicos son metas comunes de políticos, miembros de la comunidad y administradores (entre otros). Se debe aprovechar las nuevas tecnologías para evaluar los impuestos a la propiedad y recolectar datos a fin de procurar el funcionamiento justo y eficiente de los sistemas fiscales. Sin embargo, las mejoras técnicas son sólo una parte del proceso; es también crítico ganar la aceptación del público, y para ello hay que concertar diálogos entre los habitantes de la comunidad y los políticos, donde se expliquen las desventajas del sistema actual y las consecuencias de mantenerlo. Al organizar discusiones serias dentro del dominio público, aumentará la confianza colectiva en el sistema fiscal.

Claudia M. De Cesare es consultora del Departamento de Tributación Local de la municipalidad de Porto Alegre. En 1999 obtuvo una beca de tesis del Instituto Lincoln para financiar la investigación comunicada en este informe y en su tesis de doctorado en la Universidad de Salford en Inglaterra. El Instituto Lincoln continúa desarrollando programas educacionales con administradores, políticos, expertos y miembros de la comunidad de Porto Alegre para ayudar a mejorar la equidad y eficacia del sistema de impuestos a la propiedad.

William Fischel is professor of economics and the Patricia F. and William B. Hale ’44 Professor in Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was a member of the Hanover zoning board for 10 years, and has long served on the teaching and research faculty of the Lincoln Institute. He has written more than 50 articles and three books about the related topics of local government, land use controls, school finance and property taxation. Fischel’s most recent book pulls those themes together under the title The Homevoter Hypothesis (Harvard University Press 2001), and he will discuss them at a course at the Lincoln Institute on April 25.

Land Lines: The term homevoter doesn’t seem to be in any dictionary. What does it mean?

William Fischel: I coined the word to convey the theme of my book. My original title was Municipal Corporations and the Capitalization Principle, but when I tried it out on people their eyes glazed over. I had to think of something catchier, and homevoter popped into my head. In local government elections, residents tend to “vote their homes.” For example, if the school board proposes a tax increase to reduce class size, most homeowners will consider the impact of the taxes and the better school quality on the value of their homes as well as on their personal situations.

LL: What’s the difference between people voting their personal situations and voting their homes?

WF: If people voted only according to their immediate situation, almost every school referendum would be voted down. Since the last of the baby boomers graduated from high school in the late 1970s, only about a third of all American households have any children in public school. If people only cared about whether school expenditures benefited them directly, the two-thirds of voters without kids in school would vote down school referenda and save themselves some taxes. The reason they usually don’t is that they know that scuttling the local schools will drive their home values down. They may not like paying taxes, but most voters will not actively oppose a reasonable school budget.

LL: Why would home values override immediate concerns about taxes, since most homeowners plan to keep their houses for a long time?

WF: For the great majority of homeowners, the equity in their home is much larger than their holdings of stocks and bonds and savings accounts. An owner-occupied home is a huge asset, and it is nearly impossible to diversify the financial risk of holding on to it. People who own a lot of stocks can diversify their holdings by buying mutual funds. But you cannot diversify your homeownership portfolio by buying a tenth of a house in Cambridge, a tenth in Springfield, a tenth in Pittsburgh, and so forth. You are stuck with all your homeownership eggs in one local basket. If the schools are declining, so is much of your investment. You don’t have to plan to sell a home soon to be concerned about its value, just as you don’t have to be ready to retire to be concerned about your retirement investments.

LL: So even people who will never have kids are interested in the quality of public schools?

WF: They sure are, especially when they are buying a house. Many economic studies of housing values have found that the major determinant of house price differences among communities is the quality of public schools. Further, the difference in home values is not reflected in the cost of the structure but in the land value. If your home burned down and you decided to sell your lot instead of rebuilding, the price of the lot would reflect the value of the community’s public assets such as its schools. The structure itself would just reflect the cost of building it.

LL: What other community assets do homevoters pay attention to?

WF: Lots of things, including neighborhood traffic, local parks, good (or bad) views, local air quality, open space, crime rates and public libraries. Like school quality, all of these community characteristics are capitalized in home values if they are better or worse than average.

LL: Capitalized? As in the stock market?

WF: Yes, just as in the stock market. If Merck Pharmaceuticals develops an effective drug to treat cancer, the value of Merck stock will go up. That good news is quickly capitalized in (or reflected in) the price of the stock. If a particular city found a good way to control traffic noise and congestion, the value of homes there would rise. In both cases, the stockholders would be pleased.

LL: How is a city like Merck?

WF: They are both corporations. One is a municipality and the other is a business, but each has a corporate identity that is independent of its owners or residents. The main difference is that a city’s major stockholders, its homeowners, cannot diversify their assets. So unlike most business stockholders, residents pay close attention to what their corporation’s managers are doing. They make managers do their business in the open most of the time, and they make their board of directors—the city council—stand for election more frequently than business corporation boards.

LL: What about the role of other stakeholders, such as local business owners?

WF: Business people are usually behind development plans, and city councils pay attention to them. But in the municipalities where most people live—cities and towns of less than 120,000 population—homeowners have to be persuaded that the proposed development will do them some good. Just creating jobs and lowering taxes is not enough in most places. A job-creating, tax-paying factory whose traffic, noise and pollution devalue the homes of nearby residents will have a hard time getting permission to locate there. Homevoters may not be as active as developers, but they are usually more numerous and vocal, and few city councils can afford to ignore their concerns.

LL: And how do renters benefit from the system?

WF: Renters get the benefit of municipal services that are more consumer-oriented as a result of homevoters’ activism. But renters have a shorter time horizon because when they move they neither gain nor lose from the local improvements they leave behind. This may explain why renters tend to participate in local government less than homeowners. They don’t have the long-term financial stake that even the short-term homeowner has.

LL: What’s the downside of homevoters’ influence?

WF: The downside is exclusionary zoning. Zoning is a necessary tool for local governments to rationalize development. The problem is that homevoters can overuse this tool. Because homes are not a diversifiable asset, homeowners often become risk averse to any development that might reduce their home’s value. The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome is most often seen in homeowners, and my theory says they are rational to behave this way. But what is rational for the homeowners in a single community might not be rational for the larger region. Siting low-income housing, power plants, half-way houses and the other necessary but sometimes unlovely developments is impeded by having people too worried about their home values.

LL: Is there a way to control the bad side of homevoting and still keep the good side?

WF: Understanding where the problem comes from is a start. People who oppose low-income housing projects are not necessarily opposing low-income people. They may be mainly worried about their home values. One way to deal with that would be to offer home-value insurance for neighborhoods that feel threatened by proposed land use changes. An innovative program in Chicago offered home-value insurance to help forestall “panic selling” and thus stabilize neighborhoods with respect to both home values and socioeconomic composition. It might be worth extending home equity insurance to other situations in which neighborhood change raises the anxieties of homeowners.

LL: But people have lots of reasons to oppose neighborhood changes besides loss of property value.

WF: It is rare for people to mention property values in public discussions. It sounds too selfish to talk about in a public forum. But economists know that most of the things that people do talk about, such as traffic, noise, open space and service costs, clearly affect people’s home values. Whether owners are consciously relating these characteristics to home values or simply intuitively aware of this connection is hard to say. If developers could take home values off the table in such debates, it might go a long way to overcoming the NIMBY problem.

LL: You mentioned earlier that the quality of community life was reflected in land values. Would this argue for a tax on land rather than improvements in order to finance local services?

WF: I think it does, and in fact that’s what most property taxes really do tax. Local development is a highly regulated activity because of zoning laws, planning reviews and environmental impact statements. I believe that local land use regulation is tight enough to make buildings essentially indistinguishable from land as a tax base. Take the example of the home that burns down. The buyer of the lot typically has to put up another home of the same type, and the tax payment on land and structure will be the same as before. For the most part, owners of homes and businesses in zoned communities have only one allowable use for their land, so that increasing or decreasing local taxes is not going to affect that use. That’s exactly the same virtue as a tax on land. Beyond that, taxing property value gives voters cooperative incentives on the zoning front. Homevoters won’t want to trash another side of town with an unfriendly land use, because devaluing other people’s property would cause property taxes to be shifted to the remaining homeowners.

LL: A land tax is what Henry George advocated more than 100 years ago. Are you saying that the local property tax already is a land tax?

WF: Yes, within certain contexts. It is quite a bit like a land tax in largely residential communities and for most new development. Zoning limits a developer’s alternatives, so the tax rate will not alter his behavior. A general property tax would not be like a land tax, however, if it were administered by a large jurisdiction such as a state or national government, unless those governments also had local zoning controls in place. It is the combination of local zoning plus the property tax that approximates a land tax. Henry George’s ideas came in through the back door of suburban zoning and property taxation rather than through the front door of state and national taxation.

The core competence of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is the analysis of issues related to land, and ours is one of the few organizations in the world with this focus.

The Institute’s current work program, both in the United States and in selected countries around the world, encompasses the taxation of land, the operation of land markets, the regulation of land and land use, the impacts of property rights, and the distribution of benefits from land development. This focus on land derives from the Institute’s founding objective—to address the links between land policy and social and economic progress—as expressed by Henry George, the nineteenth-century political economist and social philosopher.

The Institute plays a leading role in the analysis of land and property taxation, land valuation and appraisal, the design of land information and cadastral systems, and the reform and establishment of property tax systems. Work on the operation of land markets includes the analysis of transit-oriented development and research on urban housing and the expansion of urban areas. The regulation of land encompasses work on smart growth and growth management, visualizing density and the physical impact of development, mediating land use disputes, land conservation, and the management of state trust lands in the West. Analysis of property rights includes research on diverse topics including informal markets and land titling in developing countries, the establishment of conservation easements, and the preservation of farmland. Much work is underway on the distribution of benefits from land development, including value capture taxation, tax increment financing, university-led development, and community land trusts that seek to promote affordable housing.

While the Institute’s work in recent years has emphasized urban land issues, it has also addressed problems beyond urban boundaries such as conservation, management of state trust lands, and farmland preservation. A balance of activities across urban and rural topics will persist as the Institute’s work program continues to focus on land issues of relevance to social and economic development. The Institute will not normally address topics that lack a strong link to land policy.

Communicating new findings through education programs, publications, and Web-based products is a core Institute activity. The overarching objective is to strengthen the capacity of public officials, professionals, and citizens to make better decisions by providing them with relevant information, ideas, methods, and analytic tools. The Institute offers traditional courses and seminars, and is moving aggressively to make many of its offerings available on the Web as either programmed instruction or as online courses with real-time interactions between students and instructors. The Institute also develops training materials and makes them available to others, for example through activities in several developing countries that involve the training of trainers in topics such as appraisal and tax administration.

Research strengthens the Institute’s training programs and contributes to knowledge about land policy generally. The Institute supports both mature scholars who conduct groundbreaking research and advanced students who are working on their dissertations or thesis research. The Institute offers several fellowship programs and other opportunities for researchers to propose work on important topics that can contribute to current debates on land policy. The results of this research are regularly posted on the Institute Web site as working papers and are published in books, conference proceedings, and policy focus reports.

Demonstration and evaluation activities constitute the third major component of the Institute’s agenda. Recently the Institute has begun to combine education, training, research, and dissemination in demonstration projects that apply knowledge, data collection, and analysis to the development and implementation of specific policies in the areas of property taxation, planning, and development. These projects are being expanded to include the analysis of policies as they are applied, and to assess and evaluate outcomes in terms of the intended objectives of the policies. The goal is to provide more rigorous evidence about how well and in what circumstances specific land and tax policies achieve their objectives so that information can be incorporated into future research and training programs.