After decades of war, Somalia to start property taxations

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Construction boom in Mogadishu, Somalia

MOGADISHU —-Somalia’s government has unveiled a new property taxations scheme as part of a new plan aimed at expanding the government’s principal income sources in a country which is recovering from decades of war.

Announcing the new tax authority, Somalia’s attorney general has ordered real estate and property owners to start paying the duty, warning that failure in paying the tax would lead to arrests.

The development comes as the Somali capital is experiencing a property boom since the ouster of Islamist militants from Mogadishu and surrounding regions in 2011.

Somalia’s property owners have long enjoyed decades of tax-free atmosphere, thanks to the instability and lack of functioning government.

Despite security challenges, Somalia’s central government is trying to impose its authority across Somalia in an attempt to restore law and order in the horn of Africa nation.

However, Mr. Dahir has instructed the local government to implement the new regulation, urging the public to help the government to start collecting property taxes revenue.

Echoing the attorney general’s new authority, Mogadishu mayor Hassan Mohamed Hussein has also announced that the local government has already started collecting property taxes in the city, pledging his administration would implement the regulation packages within a short time.

Mr. Hussein has noted that the government would use the property tax income to build roads, public schools and the city’s economic infrastructure after decades of war.

Somalia has last seen property taxation system in 1991 before warlords overthrew the central government led by president Mohamed Siad Barre, plunging the country into endless conflict which led to the permanent destruction of the country’s economic infrastructure and ended the rule and regulations the country has enjoyed for many years.