The development of property taxation in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe

Within the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, radical and far‐reaching programmes of reform are taking place. Central to these are the processes of privatisation and decentralisation which require the newly‐created tiers of local government to develop their own sources of locally‐based revenue. The property tax represents what is, from an international perspective, the most important, stable source of revenue for local government. The majority of the new emerging democracies have introduced or are in the process of introducing ad valorem‐based property taxes. This paper begins by focusing on those key elements which are central to the successful implementation of such systems and then gives a brief summary of developments in two transitional countries, namely, Armenia and the Czech Republic.