Palestinian Territories, Decentralisation of Property Tax

Objective:

The overall objective is to investigate how decentralisation of property tax can contribute to enhance (property) tax revenues to enable municipalities in Palestine to deliver improved basic services to citizens.
Specific objectives are: Enhanced property tax revenues and services to citizens when they are given a full mandate to collect property tax themselves.

The aimed impact of the project is improved finances and services for municipalities in Palestine. The outcomes of the project are the implemented improvement plans in IT & processes, communication towards citizens and legal/policy issues at the local level. The project has a strong focus on improved processes and IT for property tax at the municipal and central level.

The project team consists of international and local experts in the field of business architecture, IT policies, IT development and implementation, GIS data management, legal advisors, communication specialists, and municipal finance and taxation experts.

Specific outputs of the project are:

1. A reference framework for property related geo and administrative data;
2. A operational guide on street naming, house numbering and collection and registration of geo data and administrative data on properties for Palestinian municipalities;
3. Facilitating IT functionality necessary for implementing the operational guide;
4. Implementation plan for the operational guide in a limited number of pilot municipalities to obtain lessons learned;
5. Sustainable handover of deliverables to a technical working group of PA counterparts to secure local ownership.

The project runs from 2018 until 2022 and has a number of phases:

Phase 1: Development of the reference guide and IT functionality
Phase 2: Support to implementation of the reference guide in pilot municipalities
Phase 3: Pilot evaluation and sustainable handover

Types of services:

• Tax and organisation training & workshops
• Software development (management)
• Data collection/migration
• Process and IT training
• IT workshops
• communication training & workshops
• communication campaign development- Budget support

Specific activities:

Phase 1: Development of the reference guide and IT functionality
1A. Instalment of a technical working group
1B. Analysis of national legislation, current state and international experience
1C. Drafting reference guide and reference model
1D. Developing the functionality

Phase 2: Support to implementation of the reference guide in pilot municipalities
2A. Selection of municipalities
2B. Support to implementation of the pilot

Phase 3: Pilot evaluation and sustainable handover
3A. Pilot evaluation
3B. Sustainable handover