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3.90 Some countries have experimented with other types of quids pro quo. In Brazil, a property tax clearance is required before a company can bid for mun'cipal contracts. Success is also reported in using tie-ins with utilities. In Caracas, electric power is shut off for nonpayment of property taxes, a penalty that is reportedly extremely effective. There is some risk in linking utility service to property tax payment, however. Onitsha, Nigeria, attempted to use the threat of interrupted water service as an enforcement mechanism. But as the service itself was unreliable, the threat was not significant, and taxpayers took to not paying their property taxes in retaliation for poor service delivery.

# Administrative Targets

3.91 Organize System for Recording Payment and Tracking Delinquencies. Improvements in collection administration must accompany charges in the legal framework of the property tax. To impose penalties, the taxing authority must know who to impose them against. Finding out can be a major exercise. The city of Amman, for example, confronts a minimum of four hundred thousand property tax payments annually, each of which must be recorded and credited against the appropriate taxpayer's liability. All four hundred thousand records must be reviewed periodically to assemble the list of major delinquents, against whom enforcement action will be taken. Where payment can be made in installments, the volume of transactions increases proportionately. The municipality of Rio permits payment in monthly installments and confronts a potential flood of 12 million transactions.

3.92 Where clerical labor is cheap and the volume of transactions is relatively small, a well organized manual system can cope effectively with collection monitoring. Onitsha, with a population of two hundred thousand, records payments in a large ledger (permitting fifty records to be viewed at a time) and is reportedly able to easily identify the major delinquents. With the falling price of small computers, the case for computerizing billing and collection records is fairly strong--particularly in large cities. Brazil is promoting the use of microcomputers for billing and collection in the larger cities served by its national technical assistance program. Smaller jurisdictions are encouraged to share regional computers, through individual terminals linked through telephone lines.

3.93 In Indonesia, a pilot project in Tangerang is addressing the information management problem by shifting it to private banks. Within the pilot project area, taxpayers are instructed to make their property tax payment at a specific bank branch, which is responsible for receiving payment and identifying delinquents.

3.94 jecentgalize Collection Facilities. The sheer inconvenience of the procedures required to pay the property tax can also adversely affect collection efficiency, discouraging taxpayers who would otherwise be willing to comply. It is not unusual--given the unreliability of the mails--for local government to require property taxes to be paid in person. In Manganilla, Philippines, taxes must be paid in person at city hall, during the first two weeks of January. Taxpayers report waiting times of several days.