Finance Minister Hani Qadri Demian said housing units of children will be exempted from the real estate tax if the parent owner proves through the address written in his and his children’s ID cards that they are planned residence for his children.

He added that family residences less than two million pounds in value are also exempted.

The minister assured that the branches of the Real Estate Tax Authority are open from 8am to 6pm for citizens to file any complaints about their property's tax assessment.

Demian said he is meeting with all the branches to make sure that procedures are well facilitated and that there are no bureaucratic problems.

“We sent three million letters of notification so far,” he said, adding that those notifications are not meant as tax assessments but rather as a checklist of family residences.

“This tax is applied in many countries around the world,” he said. “Only there, it is much higher than in Egypt.”

“Our estimate is that 95 percent of the family real estate units will be exempted because they are either old or worth less than two million pounds,” he said.

Finance Minister advisor Tarek Farrag said the minister gave orders to write on the application forms that the taxpayer has the right to a tax exemption if the family unit is less than two million pounds, that he also has the right to file a complaint against the tax assessment if he owns other real estate, and that he will not pay the tax until his complaint is decided upon.

The government expects to collect around LE3.5 billion (roughly $489 million) in revenues from this tax.