Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 4 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

En muchas ciudades brasileñas, los impuestos a la tierra y las edificaciones son muy poco utilizados. Según datos del Instituto Brasileño de Administración Municipal (IBAM), por ejemplo, en la mitad de los municipios de más de 50.000 habitantes el impuesto a la propiedad representa menos del 30% del total de los recursos tributarios. Considerando que para la mayoría de estos municipios los ingresos a cuenta de impuestos locales representan menos del 30% de los recursos totales, los impuestos a la propiedad no sobrepasan al 10% de los recursos financieros de los municipios (incluyendo transferencias intergubernamentales). Tales porcentajes resultan incluso menores en los municipios más pequeños. Otros impuestos basados en la tierra, tales como el impuesto a la transferencia de bienes raíces y el impuesto a las mejoras a la propiedad presentan un patrón de resultados igualmente desalentadores.

Especialmente a partir de la nueva Constitución brasileña de 1998, cuando la responsabilidad principal de planificación del uso de la tierra fue transferida al nivel local, los municipios se han vuelto cada vez más conscientes de que la regulación del uso de la tierra y las inversiones públicas en infraestructura introducen cambios en el valor de la tierra. Muchos empleados oficiales públicos están actualmente tratando de desarrollar estrategias de planificación para capturar parte de los beneficios “gratuitos” resultantes. A la vez, los gobiernos locales están encontrando problemas en la aplicación de instrumentos tradicionales de planificación tales como el Plano Diretor, una medida constitucional que requiere que las ciudades con poblaciones mayores de 20.000 habitantes desarrollen un plan maestro. Estas ciudades se encuentran cada vez más involucradas en el debate sobre la flexibilidad del marco regulativo del uso de la tierra. Consecuentemente, la idea de una zonificación flexible a cambio de contribuciones de los promotores se ha vuelto también popular.

Para investigar los aspectos económicos, financieros y de planificación urbana de estos cambios negociados en el uso de la tierra, el Instituto Lincoln y la Municipalidad de Santo André (Estado de São Paulo) organizaron un programa de tres días sobre “Instrumentos y Técnicas de Financiamiento del Desarrollo Urbano en base a la Tierra” en mayo de 1998. Durante los dos primeros días, empleados municipales de Santo André se reunieron con conferencistas invitados para compartir sus experiencias en instrumentos de zonificación, captura del valor y desarrollo económico local en lugares tan diversos como Nueva York, Ciudad de México y Colombia. Las discusiones abarcaron tres temas generales: la captura del valor y el financiamiento urbano; la planificación urbana y el mercado de la tierra; y las negociaciones y asociaciones público-privadas.

El programa finalizó con un debate público que incluyó a una audiencia regional de aproximadamente 200 planificadores, promotores y representantes de organizaciones no gubernamentales, del sector privado y de las comunidades locales dentro de la región del Gran ABC (siete municipios alrededor de São Paulo, incluyendo a Santo André, que en conjunto constituyen el área industrial más densa de Latinoamérica). Un grupo de discusión sobre la efectividad de las negociaciones en base a la tierra y las asociaciones público-privadas en el contexto brasileño contó con la participación de conferencistas de la Universidad de São Paulo, del sector de bienes raíces y de los gobiernos locales.

Numerosas conclusiones se derivaron del programa. Primero, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra típicamente se producen en ambientes donde los impuestos a la propiedad no funcionan bien. En Santo André, por ejemplo, las restricciones operativas y legales existentes dificultan el reacondicionamiento del sistema de impuestos a la propiedad (ver Figura 1).

Segundo, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra en Santo André parecen acompañar un cambio continuo de usos industriales a usos asociados con el moderno sector terciario de servicios. A través del proceso de negociación, se introduce una mayor flexibilidad dentro del existente marco legal, como se ha observado en las recientes negociaciones entre el centro comercial Plaza ABC y Pirelli, la empresa multinacional de fabricación de neumáticos. Tercero, aun cuando las negociaciones del uso de la tierra aparentemente satisfacen expectativas en lo que se refiere a complementar la dinámica de la economía local, no hay una metodología ni un marco bien establecidos que permitan definir reglas claras y estables basadas en un análisis sólido de costo y beneficios. En comparación con experiencias internacionales como la de Nueva York, resulta difícil prever las compensaciones monetarias que se pueden esperar en las ciudades brasileñas y si dichas compensaciones son realmente eficientes (en términos de Pareto) vis-a-vis situaciones en las que el permiso de desarrollo se hubiese negado.

Finalmente, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra deben ser vistos como un elemento esencial de la estrategia general de desarrollo económico local. En la región del Gran ABC, las asociaciones estratégicas entre inversionistas de los sectores público y privado son cada vez más importantes en vista del proceso constante de reestructuración local y regional que ha tenido dramáticos efectos negativos en los niveles de ingreso y de empleo.

Entre las lecciones que nos ofrece el programa de Santo André está la necesidad de desarrollar mejores medidas para calcular los aumentos del valor de la tierra causados por los cambios de zonificación, a fin de poder desarrollar medios para capturar esos valores a través de sistemas más eficaces de tasación. Además, la experiencia de Nueva York muestra que es mejor recolectar impuestos a tasas más bajas por medio de un sistema universal y estable, que en base a una negociación arbitraria caso por caso, la cual puede prestarse al abuso y a la corrupción.

Jeroen Klink, economista urbano, es consejero del alcalde de Santo André. Anteriormente fue Dissertation Fellow del Instituto Lincoln, y se encuentra completando su tesis de doctorado sobre “Fuentes de Financiamiento Urbano: la Aplicabilidad del Modelo Estándar Económico al Caso Brasileño” en la Escuela de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad de São Paulo, Brasil. Luis Carlos Afonso, economista, es Secretario de Finanzas de Santo André. Irineu Bagnariolli Jr., sociólogo urbano, es Secretario de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano de Santo André.

Figura 1: Limitaciones a la Revisión del Impuesto a la Propiedad

En 1993, la administración de la ciudad de Santo André aprobó una ley otorgando un descuento del 40% en el impuesto a la propiedad. Dicho descuento iba a ser válido solamente durante ese año. Sin embargo, la reducción ha sido mantenida como resultado de varias cláusulas legales que determinan que el valor del impuesto en el año en curso no puede exceder el valor del año anterior, estableciendo así un límite al impuesto.

Otra restricción al uso más agresivo del impuesto, especialmente a fin de promover una tasación más equitativa, es la interpretación dada por la Corte Suprema de que el impuesto no puede ser progresivo. La única excepción permitida es la aplicación penal por desuso o falta de uso de la propiedad, cláusula que en sí misma depende de la emisión de nuevas leyes federales y que ni siquiera ha sido discutida por el Congreso. (Claudia M. De Cesare, “Usando el Impuesto a la Propiedad para la Captura del Valor: el Caso de Brasil”, Land Lines, enero de 1998).

Durante 1990 y 1991, una administración previa en Santo André trató de otorgar descuentos al impuesto a la propiedad basados en las características físicas, el uso actual y el tamaño de la propiedad, pero la iniciativa fue rechazada posteriormente por dictamen de la Corte a causa de su supuesto carácter progresivo oculto. Así, el límite a los impuestos a la propiedad, a pesar de ser revocado formalmente por una ley posterior, permanece básicamente inalterado, ya que si los impuestos fueran aumentados los sectores más pobres de la población serían los más afectados en forma negativa.

Finalmente, en Santo André y en todas las ciudades brasileñas, el valor del metro cuadrado de tierra está fijado por ley, lo cual impide la capacidad de la administración urbana de aplicar impuestos a la propiedad de bienes raíces de acuerdo con su valor en el mercado.

In Santo Andre and all Brazilian cities, the value per square meter of land is fixed by law, thus hindering the capacity of the city administration to tax real estate property according to its market value. In 1993 the Santo Andre city administration passed a law to grant a 40 percent discount on the property tax, which was to be valid only for that year. However, this reduction has been maintained as a result of several legal clauses that determined that the value of the tax in the current year could not exceed its value in the previous year, thus establishing a tax cap.

Value capture in Santo Andre

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Municipality of Santo Andre in Sao Paulo State organized a three-day program on “Instruments and Techniques for Land-based Finance for Urban Development” in May 1998 where organizers and participants shared their expertise on zoning instruments, value capture, and local economic development in such diverse settings as New York City, Mexico City and Colombia. Their discussions addressed three broad topics: value capture and urban finance; urban planning and the land market; and negotiations and public/private partnerships.

This article explores the lessons learned from the Santo Andre program and the need to develop better measurements of land value increments resulting from zoning changes to promote value capture through more efficient taxation systems.

In many Brazilian cities, land and building taxes are significantly underutilized. According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration (IBAM), for example, in half of the municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants the property tax represents less than 30 percent of total tax resources. Considering that for most of these municipalities, local tax revenues represent less than 30 percent of total resources, the property tax does not amount to more than 10 percent of financial resources (including intergovernmental transfers). These percentages are even less in smaller municipalities. Other land-based taxes, such as the real estate transfer tax and betterment tax, show a similarly disappointing pattern.

Especially since Brazil’s new constitution of 1988, when the major responsibility for land use planning was transferred to the local level, municipalities have become increasingly aware that land use regulation and public investments in infrastructure create changes in land values. Many public officials are now looking for planning strategies aimed at capturing part of the “unearned” benefits that may result. In addition, local governments are facing problems with traditional planning instruments such as the Plano Diretor, a constitutional provision that requires cities with a population of 20,000 or more to develop a master plan. These cities have become increasingly involved in the debate about the flexibility of the regulatory framework on land use. Consequently, the idea of flexible zoning in exchange for developers’ contributions has also become popular.

To investigate the economic, financial and urban planning aspects of these negotiated land use changes, the Lincoln Institute and the Municipality of Santo Andre in Sao Paulo State organized a three-day program on “Instruments and Techniques for Land-based Finance for Urban Development” in May 1998. During the first two days, municipal officials from Santo Andre met with invited guest speakers who shared their expertise on zoning instruments, value capture and local economic development in such diverse settings as New York City, Mexico City and Colombia. Their discussions addressed three broad topics: value capture and urban finance; urban planning and the land market; and negotiations and public/private partnerships.

The program ended with a public debate involving a regional audience of some 200 planners, developers, and representatives from non-governmental organizations, the private sector and local communities within the Greater ABC region-(seven municipalities around Sao Paulo, including Santo Andre, which constitute the densest industrial core area in Latin America). A panel discussion on the effectiveness of land-based negotiations and public/private partnerships in the Brazilian context included the participation of guest speakers from the University of Sao Paulo, the real estate sector and the local governments.

A number of conclusions were drawn from this program. First, negotiated land use changes typically proliferate in an environment where property taxes do not work well. In Santo Andre, for example, existing legal and operational restrictions make it difficult to overhaul the property tax system. (See Figure 1.)

Second, negotiated land use changes in Santo Andre seem to accompany the ongoing shift from industrial land uses toward uses associated with the tertiary and modern service sector. Through the negotiation process more flexibility is brought to the existing legal framework, as is seen in recently completed negotiations between the Plaza ABC shopping center and Pirelli, the multinational tire company.

Third, although land use negotiations apparently fulfill expectations in terms of complementing the dynamics of the local economy, there is no well-established methodology and framework to allow transparent and stable rules based on solid cost-benefit analysis. Compared with international experiences, for example in New York, it remains difficult to predict what monetary compensations can be expected in Brazilian cities and whether these compensations are really Pareto efficient compared to situations where the development permit would have been denied.

Finally, negotiated land use changes should be seen as an essential element of the overall local economic development strategy. In the Greater ABC region, various strategic partnerships among key stakeholders from the private and public sectors are increasingly important in light of the ongoing process of local and regional economic restructuring that has had dramatic negative effects on employment and income levels.

Among the lessons to be learned from the Santo Andre program is the need to develop better measurements of land value increments resulting from zoning changes in order to then develop the means to capture those values through more efficient taxation systems. The New York experience further shows that it is better to collect taxes at a lower rate through a universal and stable system rather than on an arbitrary, case-by-case negotiated basis that can be susceptible to abuse and corruption.

Jeroen Klink, an urban economist, is the adviser to the mayor of Santo Andre. He is a former Lincoln Institute Dissertation Fellow who is completing his Ph.D. thesis on “Sources of Urban Finance: The Applicability of the Standard Economic Model to the Brazilian Case” at the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Luis Carlos Afonso, an economist, is the secretary for finance in Santo Andre. Irineu Bagnariolli Jr., an urban sociologist, is the secretary for housing and urban development in Santo Andre.

Figure 1: Restraints on Revising the Property Tax

In 1993 the Santo Andre city administration passed a law to grant a 40 percent discount on the property tax, which was to be valid only for that year. However, this reduction has been maintained as a result of several legal clauses that determined that the value of the tax in the current year could not exceed its value in the previous year, thus establishing a tax cap.

Another restriction on a more aggressive use of the tax, especially as a way to promote more equity, is the interpretation given by the Supreme Court that the tax cannot be progressive. The only exception is its application as punishment for unused or underutilized property, a clause that itself depends on additional federal lawmaking and has not even been discussed by Congress. (See Claudia M. De Cesare, “Using the Property Tax for Value Capture: A Case Study from Brazil,” Land Lines, January 1998.)

During 1990 and 1991, a previous Santo Andre administration had tried to give discounts on the property tax based on the physical characteristics, current use and size of the property, but that effort was subsequently rejected by Court rulings because of its supposed hidden progressive character. Thus, the cap on the property tax, despite being formally revoked by a subsequent law, remains basically unchanged because if taxes were increased the poorer segments of the population would be most negatively affected.

Finally, in Santo Andre and all Brazilian cities, the value per square meter of land is fixed by law, thus hindering the capacity of the city administration to tax real estate property according to its market value.

Rapid urban growth, concentrated land ownership, and land use regulations often contribute to a scarcity of land serviced by public infrastructure, which facilitates huge increases in land prices and incredible speculative gains. When the legal and administrative framework cannot be changed easily to let markets operate gradual price adjustments that can be taxed via existing property and capital gains taxes, value capture is a suitable approach to attain equity, efficiency and sustainable urban development.

Value capture in Colombia

This article examines the implementation of value capture in the Colombian cities of Bogota and Cali. In the early 1990s these two cities adopted land use regulations aimed at expanding their supplies of residential land and needed a way to capture most of the increases in land values that may be attributed primarily to authorized changes in land use. Implementation of the new value capture instrument poses formidable challenges to Colombian city administrators, who must identify those increases in value that are due primarily to administrative decisions.

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Under conditions of rapid urban growth, concentrated land ownership and land use regulations often contribute to a scarcity of land serviced by public infrastructure. This scarcity in turn facilitates huge increases in land prices and incredible speculative gains. When the legal and administrative framework cannot be changed easily to let markets operate gradual price adjustments that can be taxed via existing property and capital gains taxes, value capture is a suitable approach to attain equity, efficiency and sustainable urban development.

In the early 1990s two Colombian cities, Bogota and Cali, adopted land use regulations aimed at expanding their supplies of residential land. Bogota released an attractive reserved site in the middle of the city known as “El Salitre,” with the intention of providing additional infrastructure and establishing special regulations to ensure low- to middle-income housing. Cali expanded its urban perimeter to include a substantial piece of swampland known as “Ciudadela Desepaz,” which needed extensive infrastructure investment. The city planned to provide basic infrastructure to encourage both its own housing department and private developers to build low-income housing.

The very announcement that the respective city councils were about to promote development raised the land prices significantly. In the case of Cali, registered land transactions in Ciudadela Desepaz reflected price increases of more than 300 percent even before the City Council made its formal decision. Land quickly changed hands from a scattered group of relatively unknown cattle ranchers (and, it was documented later, some foreign and domestic drug traffickers) to land speculators and land developers. A series of administrative decisions over a 30-month period pushed land with virtually no market value to a price of more than 14,000 Colombian pesos per square meter (about US$18 in 1995). These decisions resulted in overall gains of more than 1,000 times the original land price after accounting for inflation.

El Salitre in Bogota followed a similar path of decisions by the city administration that raised the price of land substantially. Needless to say, residential housing is being occupied in both cases by middle- to high-income people, not the intended lower-income sectors.

Since cases like Desepaz and El Salitre occur regularly in major Colombian cities, the national government prepared a bill to allow cities to capture most of the increases in land values that may be attributed primarily to authorized changes in land use. Such changes include zoning, density allowances or the conversion of land from agricultural to urban uses. The bill, inspired by similar yet less stringent measures in Spanish and Brazilian laws, was passed by the Colombian Congress as Law 388 of 1997.

Colombian income tax laws, including the successfully applied Contribution de Valorizacion, a betterment levy limited to the cost recovery of public investments, are not effective in capturing the kind of extreme capital gains as seen in Desepaz or El Salitre. Law 388 of 1997, known as the Law for Territorial Development, offers several options for how local authorities may “participate in the plus-valias” through payment of the new “contribution for territorial development.” Cities and property owners may negotiate payment in cash, in kind (through a transfer of part of the land), or through a combination of payment in kind (land) plus the formation of an urban development partnership, for instance, between the owners, the city and developers.

Implementation of this new value capture instrument poses formidable challenges to Colombian city administrators, who must identify those increases in value that are due primarily to administrative decisions. The challenges include measuring the relevant increase in the value of the land, negotiating the forms of payment and establishing partnerships for urban development purposes.

As part of its research and education program in Latin America, the Lincoln Institute has been working with Colombian officials since 1994 to provide training and technical support during the successive stages of preparing the regulations and implementing Law 388 of 1997. The Institute plans to work with other countries experiencing land pricing problems so they may consider value capture measures similar to the Colombian law.

Fernando Rojas, a lawyer from Colombia, is a visiting fellow of the Lincoln Institute this year. He and Victor M. Moncayo, currently president of the National University of Colombia, drafted the bill that later became Law 388. They also worked with Carolina Barco de Botero, a member of the Lincoln Institute Board of Directors, who at the time was head of the United Nations Development Program, which oversaw preparation of the bill for the national government. Martim Smolka is senior fellow for Latin America and Caribbean Programs at the Institute.

* Value capture refers to fiscal and other measures used by governments to earmark the portion of land value increments attributed to community effort rather than to actions of the landowner. In Latin America, these land value increments are often referred to as plus-valias.