TEHRAN - Iran's Transport and Urban Development Ministry has referred a list of 109,000 vacant housing units in the capital Tehran to the National Tax Administration (INTA) to be taxed under the new vacancy tax law, ILNA reported.

According to the Deputy Transport Minister for Housing and Construction Affairs Mahmoud Mahmoudzadeh, the information regarding the owners of the mentioned houses have been given to INTA and the process for collecting tax from them will begin soon.

In the first stage of the implementation of the program for collecting tax from the country’s vacant housing units, only units belonging to natural persons are targeted, Mahmoudzadeh said.

“The list of vacant houses belonging to legal entities will also be provided to the tax body soon,” he added.

According to Mahmoudzadeh a total of 6.6 million households or 30.7 percent of the country’s 18.1 million urban households live in rented homes. 

The implementation of the vacancy tax law, as part of Direct Tax Reform Law, was put on the agenda in the Iranian calendar year ending March 2016 and was enforceable from the year ending March 2017, however there was little data on the number of vacant units then, according to Mahmoud Alizadeh, a senior official with Iran National Tax Administration.

“As per Clause 54 of Direct Tax Law, if a home remains vacant for more than a year, it will be subject to Vacancy Tax. Homes with a floor area of 150-odd square meters will be subject to tax at the rate of 20 percent of the property’s rent value,” Alizadeh said.

In early July 2020, the Iranian parliament (Majlis) approved the double-urgency plan of the vacancy tax law.

Later on, in early September, Deputy Transport and Urban Development Minister Hossein Hossein-Zadeh had said that the vacancy tax law was in its final stages for being enforced.

As reported, the mentioned plan is mainly aimed at lowering the housing rental rate in the country.

EF/MA