Property Taxation in North Macedonia

Property taxes are one of the most essential taxes for the local authorities in any country. They are the main source for providing the municipality with finance in order to provide public goods and services. The last decade of unstable fiscal policy induced the necessity to readdress the role and the potential for reform or modernization of these sort of taxes. Considering the ever-growing thirst for larger expenses and going forward with fiscal decentralization process in North Macedonia, the local governments are confronted with the need to secure more finances. Therefore, the goal is to examine the current structure of property taxes in North Macedonia, compare them to some countries in Europe and finally to propose actions regarding some changes in local tax policy in order to improve the tax collection. Those changes should follow the growing inequalities among citizens in the country. In most developed countries the volume of property tax involves real estate and personal property, like vehicles, movable household items. Even some countries take into consideration the ownership of real estate in other countries around the world in order to really detect the wealth of some people. The last reaction from the central government in order to overcome the gap in local budgets (the government borrowed 50.000.000 euros) was with intention to reduce the level of debt in most of the local municipalities and to secure their everyday functioning. Since then there are a lot of discussions in direction of better functioning of local governments through better collection of local revenues.