Property Tax Advice Please

Arch4291 wrote:

I received a letter recently regarding this in Hungarian but whenever i call or email i get no answers

Calling or emails won't work. You have to go into a local tax office in person, or hire someone in Hungary with power of attorney to do this in your behalf.

Arch4291 wrote:

My question is what happens when i am late in paying the taxes will my property be taken by the government or will i just have to pay late payment fees.

If you have a bank account in Hungary, they can go after that. They can put a lean on your property so you can not do much with it till the bills and penalties are paid. They can start court proceedings against you (which can get expensive). I don't know if they will, or even if they can, confiscate the property or not, but I guess they could if they really, really wanted to and if you failed to show up in court.

klsallee wrote:

Arch4291 wrote:

I received a letter recently regarding this in Hungarian but whenever i call or email i get no answers

Calling or emails won't work. You have to go into a local tax office in person, or hire someone in Hungary with power of attorney to do this in your behalf.

Arch4291 wrote:

My question is what happens when i am late in paying the taxes will my property be taken by the government or will i just have to pay late payment fees.

If you have a bank account in Hungary, they can go after that. They can put a lean on your property so you can not do much with it till the bills and penalties are paid. They can start court proceedings against you (which can get expensive). I don't know if they will, or even if they can, confiscate the property or not, but I guess they could if they really, really wanted to and if you failed to show up in court.

Kisallee has it all right but misspelled "lien" is what he means, that they will attach the debt to your property... yes they can confiscate your property, I live in a property that was just shy of being confiscated for that reason (well lots of other debts too, they hadn't paid the mortgage, water, gas bill etc I think there were about thirteen we had to sort out before we could complete the sale), it is only my personal experience but it is very common to find there are debts on the property. The government will not take your property away but when you come to sell it,  you will find it very difficult to sell, as the buyer and seller together will have to sort out and clear all the debts/liens on the property before you can complete the sale.  That is why in essence I got this property at an enormous discount as it was one step short of a bankruptcy sale and any money the government and bank could get back was better than nothing, but the sellers took really an enormous loss on it as they had run out of options, had their been no debt on it they could probably have got 40% more than I paid.

Any unpaid bill, gas or electricity or whatever, if you don't pay it, they will stick it as a debt on your property. It takes a long time and a lot of paperwork to get them cleared off, I would not advise that form of borrowing. I think they do charge some interest but not a particularly great amount, just that basically they want you to pay your bills and taxes, as indeed you should.

On the other hand my next door neighbour has gone through the courts to be evicted, he was supposed to be evicted two weeks ago, the chap who bought his house last September would rather like to live in it but the occupant is stalling, the occupant and presumably the legal owner have gone through the lower courts and higher courts and the occupant has been told to get out and given two week's notice, this was three or four weeks ago, and yet he is still there. We used to call it "Squatting" in British English, I don't know if that carries into Hungarian law or sense or expression... In the UK at that point you would be getting the boys round, the High Court Enforcement Officers, but it doesn't actually seem to be enforced. Nice enough family, never any harm to me, but you have a judgment through an appeals court to say you have to get out and you still don't get out... playing for time somehow but these things do not seem to be enforced, so you have to be careful that other people don't put a debt on your property.

I have a debt well had a debt of 300.000ft on my wages when I was working (well, I am always working, but happened to be working for a company instead of for myself), and they will take it out of  your wages also. I have absolutely no idea what that debt is for as I pay all my debts, or thought I had,  but was stopped out of my wages. So they can do it that way too. I have no idea what it was for, I never got any paperwork for it or warning or notice, and I am (or thought I was) squeaky clean and pay all my taxes etc on time and so forth, came out of the blue. The government demanded the company stop my wages, which they did, and the boss said "what is this debt?" and I genuinely have no idea. So they can do it by that route, too, that they can take it out of your wages.

Kisallee is using a very technical English Law expression there, "Power of Attorney", it is a bad translation. Power of Attorney in English Common law means that you, being compos mentis (of sound mind) can assign someone else to look after your legal affairs, it is generally done at the end of life before you die so that someone else can look after your affairs when you are no longer there.

What Kisallee means is a "közjegyzői hivatal", in English I back-translate as "notary public", or "jegyző", notary, recorder, that is authorised by the State to witness and say this is a faithful translation here is my stamp, this is a good and true representation of the facts. And yes, they are expensive. And if you are not competent in Hungarian (and legally I am not competent in Hungarian, for legal purposes, the fact I have been speaking and learning Hungarian for over a decade does not count, there is no written evidence that I can speak Hungarian, I have no óklevel, certificate to show that I can speak Hungarian) then you will have to have an authorised translator too.

SimonTrew wrote:

What Kisallee means is a "közjegyzői hivatal", in English I back-translate as "notary public", or "jegyző", notary, recorder, that is authorised by the State to witness and say this is a faithful translation here is my stamp, this is a good and true representation of the facts.

No. That is not what I meant. I meant exactly what I said. Please do not try to "re-interpret" what I say on my behalf.

The OP apparently lives abroad and can not go to the local tax office. One needs to get a "power of attorney" for someone else to physically go into an office for you instead of doing it yourself. The tax office will not talk to someone else on your behalf unless you give them this power, as your tax information is private and confidential.

If one does not know what "power of attorney" means, they can look it up. And, no, one does not need someone else to be an "attorney" to be given this power, but one should probably consult an attorney to draw up the paperwork to assign someone this power.

SimonTrew wrote:

Kisallee has it all right but misspelled "lien"

Yes I did misspell it. Thanks. You can always correct my spelling.

klsallee wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

Kisallee has it all right but misspelled "lien"

Yes I did misspell it. Thanks. You can always correct my spelling.

I don't care about spelling mistakes or typos, we all do them even though we presumably know how to spell and type so that is why Tippex was invented, I only pointed it out because as a legal term someone looking up "lean" is unlikely to find "lien" that's all.

Thank you all for your replies and advice,

It looks like i might have to take a trip to Hungary to pay this bill as its proving impossible to pay from the UK.

when i bought the property the estate agent was supposed to help me with this, as soon as i paid his fee and paid for the property him and the lawyer would not reply to my calls or emails. i know the property is in my name as i have the property tax bill. it has now been nearly 3 years and i only received the tax bill last week.

i was hoping i could do it online as i have all the reference numbers etc.

Arch4291 wrote:

Thank you all for your replies and advice,

It looks like i might have to take a trip to Hungary to pay this bill as its proving impossible to pay from the UK.

when i bought the property the estate agent was supposed to help me with this, as soon as i paid his fee and paid for the property him and the lawyer would not reply to my calls or emails. i know the property is in my name as i have the property tax bill. it has now been nearly 3 years and i only received the tax bill last week.

i was hoping i could do it online as i have all the reference numbers etc.

A cheap flight from the UK, and mini holiday Enjoy

Arch4291 wrote:

It looks like i might have to take a trip to Hungary to pay this bill as its proving impossible to pay from the UK.

If this bill, for some reason, requires one of those weird Hungarian payment "stamps", or if there are other complications, then you definitely need to come to Hungary or hire someone here to do it for you.

Else, the tax office should have given you all payment information in the bill, and you should be able to pay them online with a bank transfer.

Was the bill in English or Hungarian? If in Hungarian, maybe all you need is a translator to help you understand the bill. See this list:

https://www.expat.com/en/business/europ … erpreters/

Also, if you have not dealt alone with Hungarian offices.... well, maybe you should still consider to hire someone competent (easier said than done) here who has experience in this matter for foreigners to help, even if you come here. It can get complicated, fast.

klsallee wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

What Kisallee means is a "közjegyzői hivatal", in English I back-translate as "notary public", or "jegyző", notary, recorder, that is authorised by the State to witness and say this is a faithful translation here is my stamp, this is a good and true representation of the facts.

No. That is not what I meant. I meant exactly what I said. Please do not try to "re-interpret" what I say on my behalf.

The OP apparently lives abroad and can not go to the local tax office. One needs to get a "power of attorney" for someone else to physically go into an office for you instead of doing it yourself. The tax office will not talk to someone else on your behalf unless you give them this power, as your tax information is private and confidential.

If one does not know what "power of attorney" means, they can look it up. And, no, one does not need someone else to be an "attorney" to be given this power, but one should probably consult an attorney to draw up the paperwork to assign someone this power.

It is not easy to translate that very legalistic meaning. Neither you nor I claim to be lawyers. If you happen to be a lawyer I shall bow to your better judgment on tbe translation. In English law there is no such thing as an "attorney", you can give power of attorney to anyone who is compos mentis, that is entirely different from being what the US call an "attorney", a solicitor or legle eagle. Power of attorney is usually invested in close family, not with the legal beagles. Power of Attorney, in English Common Law, means that you say "somebody else can sign on my behalf", significant, sign-if-i-can't.

And I am one or rather was for my late mother so don't tell me what I already know.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your precious comments on the topic. We are however slightly drifting away from the question asked, could we please, get back to the topic ?

"I bought a property in Hungary back in 2016 and i am struggling to pay the property tax from the uk.

My question is what happens when i am late in paying the taxes will my property be taken by the government or will i just have to pay late payment fees. "

Thank you for your comprehension,
Bhavna

The bill is in Hungarian, it is 6 pages long.

google translate does not translate very well. i am going to try and get a professional to translate for me as i do not want a wasted trip to Hungary.

i am just hoping it is a bill i can pay online rather than some sort of summons, we did manage to get through to someone that spoke english the other day at the tax office the other day and they said they would ask her colleague to reply to our email but still no reply. my worry is that the letter says i have a certain amount of time to pay or else.... so i really want to pay this tax as soon as possible.