Significant Issues in Municipal Property Tax Management
Recent audit reports have placed the management of property tax collection across various municipalities under intense scrutiny, revealing substantial deficiencies that could undermine the financial integrity of local governments. Investigative findings have highlighted significant gaps in the tax assessment process, tracking of taxpayers, and collection of dues related to undeveloped urban land and subdivision operations. These shortcomings have implicated municipal leaders, council members, and administrative staff in practices that have weakened the mobilization of self-generated resources, leading to the inability to collect due amounts within the legally stipulated timeframes.
According to well-informed sources, leaks from reports prepared by regional audit councils in key areas such as Casablanca-Settat, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Marrakech-Safi, and Fez-Meknes have uncovered irregularities involving more than 23 municipal council leaders, along with deputies and employees responsible for managing tax files. The reports specifically focused on identifying shortcomings in the processes of property inventory, updating property and taxpayer databases, and monitoring the accuracy of declarations used to calculate taxes.
Critical Shortcomings in Data Management and Compliance
The auditors noted in their preliminary reports that certain municipalities failed to conduct the annual inventory of properties subject to property taxes, resulting in leaving assets unmonitored and delaying the discovery of associated dues. In some cases that underwent auditing, property owners had to submit requests for building permits before their tax statuses were identified and taxes started being collected from them, rather than proactively initiating inventory and monitoring activities.
Furthermore, the audit reports indicated a lack of effective use of available data from other public administrations and institutions, despite its importance in accurately assessing tax bases and identifying liable parties. Auditors specifically noted a failure to utilize information from the National Land Registry Agency, which could help identify property owners and match registered properties with local tax databases, thereby revealing unreported ownership and updating their statuses.
This weakness in information exchange has turned into a significant gap within the tax collection chain, as municipal services, in some audited cases, relied solely on their internal data without routinely cross-referencing it with other information sources. This has hampered their ability to track changes in property ownership and identify those liable for taxes on undeveloped urban land.
Moreover, sources have disclosed that auditors extended their observations to the management of taxes related to subdivision operations, as audit tasks uncovered that over 37 municipalities neglected to impose dues after the legal deadline of three years, despite either the lack of infrastructure works or the absence of provisional acceptance certificates. This revealed a deficiency in tracking project completion timelines and linking them with deadlines for tax obligations.
The regulatory body also scrutinized the methods used to determine the costs applied for calculating taxes on subdivision operations, noting the omission of certain expenditures from the estimated costs of infrastructure works, particularly those related to communication networks. This oversight adversely affected the calculation basis for dues benefiting the municipalities.
Disparities recorded in infrastructure costs drew the attention of auditors, as the declared values in audited files varied between 99 and 300 dirhams per square meter. This prompted a deeper examination of the documentation substantiating expenditures, the methods of estimating works, and the criteria applied by relevant departments when settling taxes, including whether the submitted declarations underwent verification before approval.
As reported by hespress.com.
