Important general advance tax ruling on real property tax on mobile containers

​​​The new real property tax rules, in force since 1 January 2025, have quickly brought about practical doubts. One of them concerns container facilities that are routinely used in business and yet are difficult to classify for tax purposes.

Is a container sitting on a plot of land and serving as an office or a technical room still 'mobile'? Or perhaps, in view of the new definitions, it should be treated as a non-building structure and taxed at a higher rate?

Different answers to those questions began to appear in the first months of applying the new rules. That is why the Ministry of Finance has issued a general advance tax ruling to clear out the taxation of container facilities.

The advanced tax ruling on the permanent attachment of containers to the land, under the legislation applicable since 1 January 2025, is the second such ruling of the MF in a short period. Earlier on 1 December 2025, the ministry issued a ruling on the concept of the land, buildings and non-building structures related to business.

Key takeaways from the newest ruling: 

• The MF clearly prioritises container's classification as a building – a container that meets the statutory criteria of a building must not be treated as a non-building structure.
• They emphasise that most containers are not permanently attached to the land because they are designed to withstand forces of nature (e.g. wind) on their own without additional anchoring. In practice, this means that a great number of containers are not subject to tax as non-building structures.​
• The MF has also given specific examples of permanent attachment to the land that may favour the taxation as a non-building structure, e.g. ground anchors, ground screws or building blocks with chemical attachments.