The finance ministry has announced that people who own a house will not have to pay tax for the second house they buy in 2017. — Photo vneconomy.vn

The finance ministry has announced that people who own a house will not have to pay tax for the second house they buy in 2017.

Nguyen Van Phung, deputy director of the ministry’s tax policy department, said the issue is still on the table for discussion and while it has been a long-pending proposal, it will not happen this year. The idea of taxing multi-house owners is a matter of concern for many Vietnamese citizens.

The regulations on how to tax and when to tax have not been clearly defined and it will take time to do it, Phung said, adding that currently there is no national synchronised information system for land and house registration records. So taxing multi-house owners is impossible at present, he said.

Many experts believe imposing tax on the purchase of second homes would help reduce speculation, and property prices would drop as a result, though they warn that tax regulations must be fair for the buyers. Developers would then be forced to improve their products to meet market demands. — VNS