SOURCE:

Faculty: Environmental Sciences
Department: Estate Management

CONTRIBUTORS:

Igwe, C. P,
Ogbuefi, J.U.
Kalu, I.U.

ABSTRACT:

One of the objectives of Land Use Act CAP L5 L.F.N. 2004 is to make land easily accessible to the people. This has become difficult as urban expansion has brought in its stead land speculation and urban sprawl on land. Taxation is a tool that can check these anomalies; but our land–based taxes are based on revenue and incident on improvement. Land Value Taxation (LVT) is a tool to manage land use and curb unsustainable practices. Thus, this study analysed urban land value taxation as a tool for sustaining land use and development in Anambra State. The research adopted a variant of contribution value method that suits the study area to partition property values into land value and building values. Survey design was used to generate data on land and building variables which were used to arrive at land values, building values and property values used for the study. A regression equation was formed to obtain building, land and property values. The values were run in a statistical package (Stata SE9) to obtain a model that described the relationship between land value, building value, property value and explanatory variables. An operational regression equation was developed for low and high density areas of the study area. The study discovered that land based taxation in the State is solely for revenue purpose and not on the underlying philosophies of a progressive taxation. The increased land values are not the owners’ efforts but that of the Government as supported by public funds; while building values’ are as a result of owners’ efforts. Hence, land should be taxed more than buildings. On the average, up to 40% of the property values accrue to land and therefore the cogent need for its taxation. All land and building variables, except age of buildings have positive coefficients. Four out of ten building variables and two out of three land variables were significant in the model at less than 0.05, indicating that the variables that influence land values play a great role on how property value model turns out. Urban land value taxation can effectively function as a tool to curb unsustainable practices (land speculation, urban blight and urban Sprawl), manage land- use, urban density and expansion. The study showed that land value variables, when compared to building value variables are very significant; hence they contribute a great deal to the overall property value, and should be taxed. The study recommended that the operations of tax assessors to arrive at property and land use charge should be improved with the implementation of urban land value taxation resulting in sustainable land -use and development. Further research can be done in using scientific techniques like Geographic Information System to analyze land value. This will capture the slightest change of landed properties even when they are in the same location.