Cuba seeks to curb tax evasion in house sales

HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 12 (ACN) The Cuban Council of State passed the Decree Law 343 of 2016, published this Wednesday in the Official Gazette, that aims at curbing tax evasion after the sale or donation of real estate.

The Law comes accompanied by resolutions of the Ministries of Justice and Finance and Prices (MFP), and sets the reference value (VR) of the property, as a complement to the legal price, said Vladimir Regueiro Ale, director of Revenue Policy of the MFP.
At a press conference, Regueiro said that said RV is not a new legal value of housing; it is only used to calculate taxes due, though the price is agreed between the parties and a flat 4 percent tax is applicable for both the seller and the buyer.
The measure, according to the official, is necessary in order to eliminate crimes committed such as understating the real amount of the transaction, in addition to masking these acts with donations, bringing with it the increase of tax evasion.
He added that to determine the RV of the house the government will take into account the number of bedrooms, kind of construction, location, as well as the existence of parking garages or yards, parking slots and gardens.
In correspondence with the urban facilities and the classification of the settlements by their importance, they take into account coefficients that go from 7.0, for special zones of development, to 1.5 for small towns.
Regueiro Ale specified that in order to carry out the calculation of the RV, no specialized personnel will be required, since the persons will be able to identify it by means of the descriptions of the property reflected in the deed of his dwelling, and using at the same time the tables contained in Resolution 112/2017 of MFP.
In the case of donation between relatives, they are allowed up to the fourth degree of consanguinity; for the adjudication of an inheritance; and liquidation by divorce and property, he said that the legal price of the property is maintained as the basis for calculating the tax on transfer of the deed