Bratislava (source: Sme)
The number of people in a city who are registered for permanent residence is key to that city's budget. This is because a given municipality receives a portion of the income tax paid by those with a permanent residence there. These revenues make up a significant portion of their budgets.
Bratislava has 491,629 registered inhabitants, based on the latest data from the economic think tank Institute for Financial Policy (IFP), running under the auspices of the Finance Ministry, the Sme daily wrote. But the institute estimates that the number of those who spend most of their time in the capital, i.e. those who study or work here is 557,264.
Bratislava’s budget is projected at €490 million for 2019. Of this, income tax paid by residents accounts for €164.55 million as the city council should get €386 per inhabitant with permanent residence. The share of the income tax is calculated from data of the Slovak Statistics Office. It puts the number of Bratislava inhabitants at 429,564.
The difference of 127,700 in inhabitants living in Bratislava but having permanent residence somewhere else costs the budget of Bratislava city council an estimated €49 million. This sum would cover half a year of operation of the city’s public transport company Dopravný Podnik Bratislavy (DPB) or is double the sum that the city council spends on road maintenance, Sme writes.
The difference in registered inhabitants and people actually living in Bratislava costs the budgets of its 17 boroughs an additional €23 million.
Out of all the revenues from the income tax of private individuals, 70 percent is received by municipalities and 30 percent goes to the self-governing regions. The share received by municipalities from the income tax of private individuals is calculated based on the size of the municipality, the number of citizens with permanent residence, inhabitants with permanent residence older than 62 and the number of students and schools.
An inhabitant will also now need permanent residence to get a residential parking permit.
Owners are afraid of registering a tenant for permanent residence
To register for permanent residence, a tenant needs the consent of the owner of the real estate. However, there are rumours circulating among property owners that if they agree to permanent residence for their tenants, it will be more complicated to evict them, including cases where they are late with the rent. Some even believe that if they terminate the rental contract, they would then need to secure alternate appropriate housing for the tenant, or in the case of an indebted tenant, a bailiff might seize property from the apartment such as furniture or equipment that is actually the property of the owner, writes Sme.
Daniela Danihel Rážová, director of the Bond Reality real estate agency and head of Slovakia’s Association of Real Estate Brokers rebuts these fears. She cites the legislation based on which registering a inhabitant for permanent residence does not mean that he or she obtains any rights to the given real estate. Permanent residence serves only for record keeping. Potential problems can be solved by a proper rental contract and detailed inventory.
“The owner can cancel the permanent residence of a tenant anytime without consent of the other party,” said Danihel Rážová, as cited by Sme. The owners need only fill in a form and prove that they have terminated the rental contract.
