Estimación del impuesto predial unificado dejado de percibir en el municipio de Piedras, Tolima, derivado de la desactualización catastral de municipio

Abstract

The fiscal autonomy of Colombian municipalities depends heavily on the collection of the unified property tax (Impuesto Predial Unificado, IPU), whose tax base is the cadastral appraisal. When this appraisal fails to reflect the real market value of properties, the municipality forgoes revenue it is legally entitled to. The municipality of Piedras, Tolima, has not updated its study of physical and geo-economic homogeneous zones since 2005, accumulating twenty-one years of cadastral obsolescence as of 2026. This research estimated the IPU fiscal gap in the urban seat of Piedras through a quantitative, descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional approach structured in four phases: a cadastral diagnosis based on IGAC's R1 and R2 registries; a real-estate market study using OIC-IGAC transactions from 2022-2025; the calculation of the updated commercial appraisal of land and buildings (with depreciation via the Fitto and Convini method) for the 1,053 properties in cadastral zone 01; and a comparative IPU assessment contrasting the current cadastral appraisal against the theoretical updated appraisal, applying the 5-per-1,000 rate set by Municipal Agreement 021 of 2025. Results show that the current cadastral appraisal ($9,483,055,000 COP) represents only 10.3% of the estimated updated commercial appraisal ($91,753,405,672 COP), and that the theoretical updated cadastral appraisal reaches $55,052,043,403 COP. As a result, the municipality forgoes $227,844,942 COP annually in IPU revenue in its urban seat, equivalent to 82.8% of its potential collection. These findings confirm the general and specific hypotheses of the study and show that the actual gap far exceeds the thresholds initially postulated. The results provide technical input to support, before the municipal administration, the urgency of a formal cadastral update, in line with the goals of CONPES 3958 of 2019 on multipurpose cadastre.