Irish Property Tax Monitor

Smart Taxes thinks it is time to monitor the gestation of the now, quite inevitable property tax in Ireland.  It started with an innocent tiny phrase ‘broadening the tax base’ infiltrating into the public lexicon but its final form was always determined from the start.   The public are being prepared for its birth sometime in the new year.

The first glimpse of the emerging entity for the public at large will be in the report of the Taxation Commission in July.  Smart Taxes sincerely hopes its DNA will express the best of what a property tax can be – i.e. an annual land tax.  But its parentage is not yet clear.  Lessor breeding might prevail and a mediocre, misbegotten proposal might well emerge.  Hopefully, such an arrival will be so misformed as to attract all the outraged fire from the entrenched Left and the Right,  so as to make room for its shapely, smarter fraternal twin.

One of the first government sponsored agencies out of the traps to declare for the new arrival is the National Competiveness Council and it picked up on a major feature of such a tax – its benign impact on productive investment.  But a land tax would be even better we point out, as it would support the struggling construction sector to improve existing properties whereas a tax based on the entire of the property value, land and building is, de facto,  tax on improvements.

Competitiveness council calls for property tax: Irish Times Report

THE INTRODUCTION of a valuation-based property tax on most residential properties in the Republic has been recommended by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC).

In a report entitled Getting Fit Again: The Short Term Priorities to Restore Competitiveness published yesterday, the NCC said that without “immediate and continuing action” to restore Ireland’s international competitiveness, the economy runs the risk of entering “a prolonged period of depressed economic activity”.

One of the key issues facing the economy, he said, is the sustainability of the public finances.

The report recommended that additional revenue should be raised by broadening the tax base through measures such as a property tax, rather than through further increases in taxes on income.

He said one positive feature of a property tax was that, unlike additional income tax, “it does not affect people’s incentive to work”.  Link to article