AZE.US
Residents of apartment buildings in Azerbaijan often face payment demands from different structures at the same time. Some fees are collected by housing offices, commonly known as JEKs, while others are requested by municipalities.
This often raises a simple question for residents: which payments are legally required, and what exactly are they paying for?
The issue is especially sensitive when people living in apartment buildings already pay a housing office for maintenance, but then receive an additional tax demand from a municipality.
Lawyer Emil Aslanov told Demokrat.az that payments made to housing and communal maintenance offices are related to the use and upkeep of the building.
According to him, these payments usually cover roof repairs, cleaning of entrances and courtyards, and garbage collection. Housing offices collect these fees, but there should normally be a contract between the service provider and residents.
“As you know, JEKs have been operating for a long time, and in many cases they continue to demand payments from citizens under rules that date back to the Soviet period,” Aslanov said.
The lawyer noted that municipalities have the right to request property tax from apartment residents, not land tax.
He explained that individuals must pay property tax on homes that are in their private ownership. However, the first 30 square meters of a residential property are exempt from tax.
For apartments in Baku, the payment is calculated based on the established coefficients for each square meter above the tax-free 30-square-meter threshold.
Aslanov said the payments collected by JEKs are mainly linked to specific services, including garbage collection, cleaning of courtyards, maintenance and painting of entrances, roof repairs, and keeping the building in proper condition.
He added that while there have been discussions about JEKs no longer functioning, municipalities have not yet fully taken over these responsibilities. As a result, many of these services are still carried out by housing offices in practice.
In other words, money paid to a JEK is a service fee for building maintenance and communal upkeep. A payment requested by the municipality, when it concerns an apartment, is a property tax calculated according to the size of the home.
The two payments therefore have different legal purposes: housing offices collect fees for maintenance and services, while municipalities may request property tax from apartment owners, but not land tax from residents simply because they live in an apartment building.
AZE.US