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DURING YESTERDAY’S FINAL Cabinet meeting before the summer break, Government ministers agreed that the Revenue Commissioners should collect the new property tax when it is introduced next year.
The Department of the Environment, which will deal with the tax, confirmed the decision this morning.
The forerunner to the property tax – the controversial household charge – was collected by the Local Government Management Agency but it has failed to gather payments from about 600,000 property owners liable for the €100 fee.
The latest figures show that less than one million homes have paid the charge with hundreds of thousands of letters sent to the remainder.
A government spokesperson indicated to reporters last night that the decision to involve the taxman was not a reflection on the LGMA’s performance but was rather deemed the most efficient and effective way to collect the proposed tax.
It is understood that further details about how the tax will be collected, how much it will be and how it will be calculated will be discussed at Cabinet level in September and October.
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It will be scrapped if the next government wins. Replace it with a third band of income tax on the rich.
It won’t be no matter who says it will. It has to be introduced. Stamp duty needs to be done away/ reduced with as having both is not justifiable.
At 1% stamp duty is effectively gone. An annual property tax is much fairer and more sustainable than the high stamp duty rates that we had in the past.
Never has a tax been scrapped in this country. Only new ones found.
Tim. Who are the rich ? Who defines it ? if it is annual income of €50k those on €49 k will agree bt those on €51k will not.
While those who bought property in recent times would seem to be hardest hit by an impending property tax since they have seen their home prices collapse there is also the long run reality of recovering values and the low mortgage interest rates that membership of the Euro brought.
In the seventies we had interest rates of eighteen per cent plus rates which were the equivalent of property taxes plus low wages. The difference over that time is the dramatic growth of a consumerist society that wants everything and they want it now. Forty years ago you furnished your new home one room at a time and frequently with second hand purchases. Today…
Perhaps a return to older values could be seen as a positive rather than a need for blaming everyone but ourselves.
@ Philip: Ironically FF did scrap property taxes – back in the late 1970s.
Not really Ryan. The got rid of rates which was a huge mistake instead of reforming them. Instead they relied on high stamp duty rates which were much more unfair.
Great Idea Tim but as the French are discovering . The real high earners who are generally the brightest will just move themselves and there assets overseas .
In the case of the French they are moving in hordes to the UK where they are paying 50% less tax .
At the moment the high earners here who are paying tax are paying it at 48% plus another 10% on the various charges . Charging them more becomes counter productive
Its funny how the revenue get more money from my weekly wages than I actually do!
you need a new accountant
For that to happen you’d need to be earning close to ?10k gross per week, I wouldn’t worry if I were you!
Lads it was a joke! Ye need to lighten up a bit
Makes sense, the revenue is pretty good at collecting tax. Looking forward to all the comments from the great outraged, this one could easily top 100 comments!
Revenue do a pretty good job all around, much more efficient than other state departments
At least there’s nothing geographically displeasing to you on this one,
This tax winds me up more than the Household Charge. What about all those that bought during the peak, paid a **ridiculous** amount of stamp duty at the time, and are now expected to pay through the nose for this tax… complete nonsense, I seriously hope there are exemptions for all those that paid a high level of stamp duty in the past… otherwise you’re just being taxed twice as far as I’m concerned.
Declan, hopefully consideration will be given to those that paid ridiculous amounts of stamp duty in the last ten years or so. High stamp duty rates were a very unfair system, an annual property tax should be fairer and more sustainable.
On the flip side look at all those who paid no property taxes for the last thirty years. First time buyers were largely exempt and those that purchased their family homes thirty years ago paid very little compared to what people had to pay in the last ten years. An annual property tax is a fairer system.
Three more years of FG and then the property tax is repealed. Vote Socialists and SF
Yeah, sure…
I earn cash into the hand (off the books) so Revenue has no claw on me. I pitty the fools who registered. Now you’ll be paying €1,000 a year.
I wonder how many Rob Mulroy’s there are in the country? :)
Hey Revenue… look over here!
Rob, when you bought your house, did your solicitor ask for your PPSN for the Revenue? Have you ever applied to Revenue for mortgage interest relief?
The fact that you are evading income tax has no bearing on whether or not Revenue will find you. In fact, once they realise you’ve bought a house but you have no declared income, you are likely to be heavily audited. I wouldn’t fancy being in your boots when that happens.
Rob’s generously provided a fair amount of other information over the past few weeks that will help Revenue zero in on him.
Rob the socialist. How can you put forward a higher tax band for “the rich” when you yourself don’t think you are obliged to pay tax. Not exactly supporting the greater good or the downtrodden worker, are you?
Rob I have just forwarded your IP address to Revenue.ie together with your posting. good luck with that.
Fair enough. Do Revenue have a facility to shop people who may be using cash in hand methods to evade income tax and vat? Particularly tax evading tools who may at the same time be calling for higher taxes on others.
Look at Rob above, no.
Do you want to pay a property tax to keep a bloated public sector? You decide. Just don’t vote for this government in 2015 or anytime earlier. Likewise with FF.
I will vote for Independents and Sinn Fein.
Curious to know how revenue will be able to determine what tax payers actually own property, indeed given the enourmous amount of people unemployed who own property and are not paying tax as such already a large section of the population are automatically excluded. What about the large amount of people on Pensions etc etc. Then there is those who reside in Ireland but are not in the tax system, how will revenue determine property sizes given we are told its going to be an equitable tax, I can’t see revenue inspectors visiting every household, bog or extreme rural location in the country, what about peoples incomes etc etc.
I don’t think the revenue will have it as easy as this cowardly government think they will in enforcing these new taxes and there is not a chance in hell they will be able to properly implement these new taxes by Jan 2013.
“how revenue will be able to determine what tax payers actually own property”, That would have been the point of the registration for the household charge.
Yes but perhaps your not aware quite a substantial amount of people have not registered for this charge, besides not all those who registered are paying income tax, my point is that Revenue are very good dealing with people on the system, PAYE workers etc etc but have little if any interaction with those unemployed, not registered to work in Ireland, residing here but not on the tax system, pensioners, those on various social welfare benifits etc. Just because your a tax payer, does not automatically mean your a property owner. I refer back to the debacle that is the lack of any data base on property ownership in Ireland and until this is resolved, the farce will continue. As an aside what about determining the size of the property, are revenue going to take peoples word on it?
Presumably revenue have a database showing people’s names and addresses. They will then have another database showing who has registered for the household charge, what their status is regarding waivers etc.
Presumably they can also use the electoral register, which is probably open to them.
They can put this information together and get a list of names and addresses that have no status on the household charge register and send them letters, threatening full tax audits.
Obviously the point in the household charge register was to save anyone having to go through that sort of exercise, the government had to assume that people are basically law abiding, no one really bargained on the reality of that assumption.
Obviously some people will fall through the gaps. However if the majority of people who should be paying can be identified then the majority of the necessary revenue should be able to be gathered.
One big difference of course is that while government has to assume that people are basically law abiding revenue works on an opposite assumption.
@ Joey Dempsey. When you purchase a house, you have to hand over your PPSN to your solicitor, who in turn sends this information to Revenue. So Revenue already have a record of property purchases and the associated PPSN numbers.
Also when people apply to Revenue for Mortgage Interest Relief, they have to supply their PPSN to them
Let’s not forget the land registry which covers 90% of the land mass and 85% of title and will only expand since the introduction of compulsory first registration across all counties. Saying that I still venomously oppose the household charge as it stands, well have to wait and see with this new tax.
Registry of deeds and land registry both have lists of deeds of propertys / land (both under the control of the property registration authority)…if they can be used I don’t know.
Also…pensioners and unemployed pple not in reciept of mortgage interest supplement are not exempt from HHCharge…I’m currently unemployed and was liable.
Joey
Anybody who has ever claimed Mort age interst relief will have to pay the property tax equally if you have claimed under section 23 or any other property relief scheme , if you bought your house for cash there is a slim chance you wont be caught but all others are very easily identifiable
Points all taken but i still maintain there will be enourmous difficulty and confusion for revenue, just on one point raised, when i purchased my own house 11 years ago i do not recall ever giving my PPS number either to the bank of tax man for that matter. I wondered also what about those who have sold their properties, will revenue be aware of this? I know there are a lot of what if”s but it would seem the absence of any coherent approach or data bases along with revenue not necessarily having up to date info on ACTUAL home ownership by ACTUAL tax payers is going to lead to yet another debacle, as it is i believe people who paid and registered are getting warning letters and those who have not! ZILCH
They can hire who they like, they get nothing off me ! II have had enough of being ripped off by this Government while they stack their own banks accounts with our hard earned money….
Looking forward to this in the Autumnn. Flabgael enjoy your break . You are genius. Democracy has just moved from a noun to a verb. You will be held accountable in the ballot box. A new national past time has just been created , studying constitutional law and defining our rites as citizens. An ardent tax payer and citizen of the republic of Ireland. Ga
Property taxes work well when they have proper systems in place to determine value, provide appropriate concessions for those who may be asset rich but cash poor, such as the elderly who bought houses several decades ago. But more importantly, the money needs to be put back into local services. In Australia for example this goes to local councils who provide parks, sporting venues, rubbish collections etc etc. They don’t use the money to repay bank debt!!!!
“In Australia for example this goes to local councils who provide parks, sporting venues, rubbish collections etc etc. They don’t use the money to repay bank debt!!!!”
Neither do we, the HHC is going straight to local governments.
@_doesnotcompute
If you keep telling yourself that over and over it might come true
No it’s going straight into the exchequer to be distributed, we will see how truthful that is when we see the council budgets for next year
I got it! I got it!
1. Vote Kenny out of office.
2. Send Kenny to China.
3. Let Kenny create ChinaTax.
Problem solved.
You might as well say, everyone back the winner of the grand national and give all the winnings to kenny to leave.
As a first measure revenue should immediately stop the payment of mortgage interest relief for those that have not paid or registered for the household charge. Why should someone receive a benefit from the state when they refuse to pay the taxes imposed by the state?
More bullshit to keep the whole issue of property taxes in peoples mind during the summer, and both sides of the home owning public at each others throats.Its a vague statement by government at best, and immediately reminded me of that old Simpsons episode where the town adopted the slogan and ethos of ‘can’t someone else do it?’ . Look at the predictable flow of comments. People who’ve registered for whichever reasons and unregistered people, each bitter at the other. Next press release will probably throw a spanner in the works by playing urban against rural houses again, site size against location and then homeowners against renters or social housing.
Why should someone pay a household charge when they receive nothing in return for it.
BOOO
Will they take into account stamp duty already paid on your property?
took the british goverment seven years to sort out the property tax not a hope will it happen here next as good as the revenue are.
Revenue will have anyone (myself included) who was getting tax relief on a mortgage on file already. Along with the other PPS numbers (partner,wife, whatever) linked to that mortgage as well. Gives them a good set of data to work off. Hope the various other types of mortgages will have similar details on file.
Like a previous poster said, as long as its fair, and seen to be fair, shouldn’t be a problem paying it. But the devil will be in the details …!
You get tax of your house repayments or you did over tge years so they have you on file ,,I have no problem paying it once it’s a fair tax ,,, bigger the house bigger tge tax it works very well in tge uk
With yesterdays annoucement revenue are set to collect next years property tax-it looks set to be deducted at source from people-since that annoucement on most Internet forums all I see is people moaning about it I don’t see many comments on what people actually want to about it-my thoughts on what should be done its up to everyone here that’s opposed to property taxes to gather up all their workmates go to the local union rep let the union rep know property taxes being deducted at source is not tolerable-from there Industrial action/work stoppages need to be organised-more people need to get Involved with anti austerity groups in their areas-mass pickets outside fg/lab tds clinics on a weekly basis-on the day the budget is annouced there needs to be mass protests in dublin-the time for moaning on Internet forums is over people need to start taking to the streets in mass numbers like the Spanish are currently doing-the suggestion by the IMF last week about medical cards was met by threats of protests from age action-if the Eldery hadn’t of protested about the medical cards a few years ago there wouldn’t of being a u turn done at that time.some of us prob weren’t born in 1979 the time of the tax marches hundreds of thousands took to the streets demanding reform of the tax system-a repeat of the 1979 tax marches in mass numbers is now needed.
Hard to make sense of this. Ever thought of using sentences, paragraphs etc?
Reg I could make perfect sense of it. Do you need glasses? Once I can only afford to pay the interest on my mortgage the house hold/ property tax will have to take a back seat and on my day out in court I will offer to pay off what I owe by doing work around my local community for an agreed hourly rate. After that they will have to lock me up.
How do the government plan to include growth in the economy? Property taxes? No one is spending in this economy and news of further taxes to come is going to set domestic growth backwards for decades?Give people a break please?
Apologies Reg, twas meant to be a general comment, not a reply to yours.
So why are we paying top dollar to local authority ‘Directors’ if they cant be trusted to collect revenue to fund their own jobs and the local services they ‘direct’.
The various arms of the state are very skilled in off-loading stuff they dont like and it seems the revenue have been saddled with this one.
Why not give it to the Gardai. Or better again Employ some people who are willing and able to do the job.
The non payers of property tax etc are kicking the can down the road. When the property is sold, could be 30 yrs time, the tax plus penalties will be claimed by the state out of the sale price. This will mean that children and grandchildren will have to pay eventually. Not paying will/can damage the next generation. Maybe you expect a future leftwing government to give general amnesties re taxes owed, but don’t count on it. When I sold my first house I had to cough up for unpaid ground rent.
What you re not telling people is the household tax can only apply as a charge on the property for 12 years-after 12 years the charge no longer applies-it will be a similar time period with the property tax.
have your say