Baloosoft

22/06/2021

Ms. Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr Mayor of Freetown won the election and became Mayor of Freetown in 2018.
Part of her Transform Freetown agenda is to improve revenue collection from property taxation. Implementation of Baloosoft’s MOPTAX system has supported the Mayor and Freetown City Council in doing exactly that.
Read more about the Transform Freetown agenda here:

"Our city belongs to all of us and we all have a role to play in making it the best it can be." Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE We aim to Transform Freetown through 11 priority sectors using an inclusive approach, underpinned by innovation and data-driven performance management. On the 24th of January....

18/06/2021

Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent on the planet.

African cities need sufficient and sustainable revenues to provide adequate public goods and services for its citizens. The booming urbanization represents a significant opportunity to increase the proportion of tax collected from property.

Baloosoft’s MOPTAX system facilitates a progressive property taxation process in markets where a well-developed real estate market is absent.

To learn more on how property taxation could improve life quality in developing nations’ cities, browse through the African Property Tax Initiative Library here:

Africa is the fastest urbanising continent on the planet. In order to provide citizens with adequate public goods and services and invest in the required infrastructure, African cities need sufficient and sustainable revenues. Property taxation is equitable, and provides stable funding for local gov...

13/06/2021

The OECD countries on average generate around 2 percent of GDP in property taxes equivalent to 5.5 percent of total tax base. In low-income developing countries property taxes account for merely 0.3 percent of GDP equivalent to only 1.8 percent of total tax base.

However, the difference is not surprising. In most countries, property taxes are collected by local governments, and good information on property ownership and on the base for valuing property is hard to obtain in developing countries’ thin markets for property transactions.

Therefore, the MOPTAX system by Baloosoft supports a points-based valuation approach, assisting local governments in discovery and progressive valuation of properties.

Read this 2018 article by Center for Global Development to learn why it is time to revisit and unleash the potential of property taxation in the developing world.

A large proportion of revenue gains over the last two decades has come from countries’ efforts to improve the design and compliance of consumption and other indirect taxes, particularly the VAT (value-added tax); in doing so, the objective has been to minimize VAT’s regressive effects by exempti...

09/06/2021

Citizens and business owners of Sierra Leone’s capital city Freetown are lining up at the City Council building, to ask question and to pay their property tax rates. Banks are on premise to take payments, and the entire process is supported by the MOPTAX system.

Baloosoft helps Freetown unleash its property tax potential.

04/06/2021

A successful property taxation programme must incorporate a comprehensive sensitisation strategy. The community must be involved in the process, building support for the programme through government development projects. Further, it is important to secure City Council’s acknowledgement of the more difficult compliance stage, which may challenge high-profile community members who chooses not to pay their rates.

29/05/2021

Can property tax valuation in Africa be done better?

Effective property taxation depends on efficient property valuation. In the absence of a well-developed real estate market, market-based valuations risk being highly subjective. At the same time surface area-based valuations risk contributing to a regressive taxation ignoring qualitative aspects of buildings that can be major determinants of value.

The ’points-based property valuation’ is a hybrid of these two approaches. It uses both surface area and easily observable characteristics to arrive at an estimate of market value.
Freetown City Council is implementing the progressive points-based approach, and the MOPTAX system by Baloosoft are supporting their efforts, all the way from discovery of property to issuance of property tax rate.

Blogpost by our cooperation partner International Centre for Tax and Development

Across sub-Saharan Africa, ineffective property valuation presents a serious hurdle to strengthening local property taxes. Between January and August 2019 the IGC and ICTD co-piloted a simplified approach to property valuation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, that combines both surface area and easily-obs...

22/05/2021

Listen to this inspiring TED talk by Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr Mayor of Freetown.

Ms. Aki-Sawyerr was elected in 2018, and improving revenue collection is a central part of her Transform Freetown agenda.

Baloosoft supports the transform agenda as our MOPTAX system helps unleash the property tax potential of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

After the devastating rebel invasion of Freetown in 1999 and the Ebola epidemic in 2014, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of the city, refused to be paralyzed by her frustration with the status quo. Instead, she used her anger as a catalyst for action. In this inspiring talk, she shares how she transformed...

13/05/2021

The MOPTAX System facilitates an annual recurring process of six steps all considered essential to the successful and sustainable mobilisation of property tax revenues.

MOPTAX supports municipalities by streamlining their current administration and implementing a discovery phase aimed at systematically increasing their existing tax base. The system simplifies the assessment and valuation process by allowing various calculation models to be configured (points based, rental value, fixed value).

08/05/2021

The Economist quotes Freetown’s new property tax system as having found a “sweet spot; It is simple to administer, efficient and fair.”

Mayor of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, Ms. Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr wants to reduce aid dependency by revamping property taxation. The Mayor wants a progressive and fully digitized property tax system.

Through a combination of sound financial E-Governance systems and expert policy advisory, Baloosoft has supported the Freetown City Council in achieving their reform ambitions - unleashing its property tax potential. Read more about the project here:

Other African cities should follow suit | Middle East & Africa