REFORMING THE PROPERTY-TAX BASE - NEED FOR A NEW DIRECTION

While acknowledging the urgent need for reform of property fax ro achi eve some standardisation and to reduce the scope for subjective: judgm ent and abuse, tills paper seeks to draw attention to the limitations of the models that have been put forward for replacing the existing ba se for property tax with a non-transparent area based system and the n eed for moving towards a base such as capital value which is more amen able to standardisation without giving rise To troublesome questions a bout adequacy of classification and so on. A properly devised capital value base, it is argued, will serve to capture the chief merits of st andardisation in conformity with the canon of equity as enshrined in o ur Constitution.