€1,000 home tax 'needed' along with PAYE hikes

thebman

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Tayto tax?

Not a bad idea actually

See he gets it

Lots of groups have been calling for this already. Obesity will be a problem in the future so we are just getting revenue to pay for a future problem and trying to discourage people from eating to obesity.

It makes sense. Which foods are selected is completely up for grabs. I'd prefer to do it on the nutritional values so low nutrition, high fat/sugar foods become expensive and it encourages more companies to produce healthy food snacks.

dodgyme

My own opinion is that if a property tax is should take into account the size of the house.

1./ People living in average sized houses should be exempt. Come up with a sq footage criteria
2./ Those in larger houses, typically of a size where there maybe 5 + bedrooms should be hit. (Come up with a sq footage criteria)
3./ Those with second homes should be hit but those with 3,4,5+ houses should be crucified. Where I live one guy owns 10 houses. These f**kers have socially engineered housing estates they have bought into and are the cold face of ar*ehole greed in this country, when young people were being screwed to afford a house over their head.

Liam Byrne

Jamar wrote: »

a single person in a 4-bed house could pay (say) 4000.

:eek: I've recently taken over (bought) the old family home because my mum wanted to keep it in the family. Spent a LOT doing it up and dragging it into the 21st century, and was glad to do so.

According to the above, I should be paying €3,000 - €4,000 extra a year ? No way! Aside from the Government incompetence angle, that's FAR too simplistic, for a number of reasons:

1) The above scenario - downright unfair to wallop people with a tax equal to one-tenth of their GROSS income - probably ONE-THIRD of their NET income, after loans/mortgages are paid :mad: - and that's specifically targetted at people who don't have a partner living there to furnish a second income (and, ironically, lower the tax)

2) I know some people who have rooms as big as 3 of the rooms in my house put together......should I knock the 3 together and make it a perfectly-valid one-bedroom house to match them and avoid the tax ?

3) Similarly, if the Govt implemented this, I could - and would - suddenly sell a bed and gain a dining room, home gym and a storage boxroom.....actually, given the wastage of money by FF, I'd probably spend money to convert a room into a garage rather than give those assholes more money to bail out more of their fat-cat banker friends

4) Inequality - why should a single person have to pay more than a smug married couple with kids ?

5) Simply not affordable - people on low-to-medium incomes, and those now unemployed as a result of all the crap will simply not be able to pay

Remember, this is a Government that's ALREADY bailing out banks with OUR money - banks that are failing NOT because of a "global downturn", but because their dodgy directors loaned THEMSELVES circa €100 MILLION; and they put NO preconditions on the bailouts!

If they'd said "we'll bail ye out but ye have to pay US the dodgy loans that ye hid", then I'd respect them, but they're a shower of incompetent ****.

And I'm not paying crazy money so they can bail out the bankers that helped land us in this mess.

vengeancepuppy

Liam Byrne wrote: »

:eek: I've recently taken over (bought) the old family home because my mum wanted to keep it in the family. Spent a LOT doing it up and dragging it into the 21st century, and was glad to do so.

According to the above, I should be paying €3,000 - €4,000 extra a year ? No way! Aside from the Government incompetence angle, that's FAR too simplistic, for a number of reasons:

1) The above scenario - downright unfair to wallop people with a tax equal to one-tenth of their GROSS income - probably ONE-THIRD of their NET income, after loans/mortgages are paid :mad: - and that's specifically targetted at people who don't have a partner living there to furnish a second income (and, ironically, lower the tax)

2) I know some people who have rooms as big as 3 of the rooms in my house put together......should I knock the 3 together and make it a perfectly-valid one-bedroom house to match them and avoid the tax ?

3) Similarly, if the Govt implemented this, I could - and would - suddenly sell a bed and gain a dining room, home gym and a storage boxroom.....actually, given the wastage of money by FF, I'd probably spend money to convert a room into a garage rather than give those assholes more money to bail out more of their fat-cat banker friends

4) Inequality - why should a single person have to pay more than a smug married couple with kids ?

5) Simply not affordable - people on low-to-medium incomes, and those now unemployed as a result of all the crap will simply not be able to pay

Remember, this is a Government that's ALREADY bailing out banks with OUR money - banks that are failing NOT because of a "global downturn", but because their dodgy directors loaned THEMSELVES circa €100 MILLION; and they put NO preconditions on the bailouts!

If they'd said "we'll bail ye out but ye have to pay US the dodgy loans that ye hid", then I'd respect them, but they're a shower of incompetent ****.

And I'm not paying crazy money so they can bail out the bankers that helped land us in this mess.

There IS no logical, moral, foolproof way to implement housing tax. Especially not in a recession.

Mr.Micro

vengeancepuppy wrote: »

There IS no logical, moral, foolproof way to implement housing tax. Especially not in a recession.

All the Government has to do is legislate for it and make it then make it a criminal act if you do not pay. That would work wonders IMO.

321654

Seems to me these days its

the private sector vs the public sector

or the people who own properties vs those who dont.

All sorts of people at each others throats out of pure begrudgery.

And all this talk about forcing old people out of their homes.

Seems noone in this country is entitled to enjoy the fruits of the long hard slog to make a better life for themselves.


This puts me off buying a house. Scratch that. Its putting me off living in Ireland.

Makes me sick.

silverharp

Fine by me, thinking of getting rid of my eircom phone line and one less overpriced holiday in Ireland, that should cover it:D

vengeancepuppy

Mr.Micro wrote: »

All the Government has to do is legislate for it and make it then make it a criminal act if you do not pay. That would work wonders IMO.

Ok, so say I make 25000 a year. I am a public sector worker close to retirement with a large family. The house I own has been in my family for generations and is quite large. I have a large family. My house is worth close to 500,000. A 1% housing tax will destroy me. So.... how is this housing tax fair on me?

Lplated

vengeancepuppy wrote: »

Ok, so say I make 25000 a year. I am a public sector worker close to retirement with a large family. The house I own has been in my family for generations and is quite large. I have a large family. My house is worth close to 500,000. A 1% housing tax will destroy me. So.... how is this housing tax fair on me?

Well considering that the public servant will be guaranteed his pension on his looming retirement, he might look on the property tax as a very insignificant contribution towards his retirement years.... unlike the many private sector people who will have to take the defined contribution blow that the current market conditions will entail.

jmayo

It will be a tad ironic that the government that brings back in a residential property tax is primarily made up of the party that removed it in the first place in 1977.
Another example of great FF forethought and populist practices :rolleyes:

There will have to be some form of residential property tax, since at the moment business pays all the rates and one way of reducing business costs is to cut their rates charges.

Most other countries have some form of property charges as a lot of those with foreign properties can testify.
Yes I know we also have the crazy stamp duty, but if they bring in "rates" they might try and tweak stamp duty to try and get people buying some of the unsold stock of new properties.
Of course this will have nothing to do with helping out friends of the building party :rolleyes:

The one thing that needs to done is to somehow make it fair.
Someone with a 1000 sq ft semi D should not be paying the same as someone with a 5,000 sq ft detached pile in Shrewsbury Rd.
Otherwise it stinks of Thatchers poll tax debacle.

IMHO people in this country are deluding themselves if they think we can cut a couple of billion off the public sector bill and there will be no changes in taxes.
Income taxes are probably going to have to be tweaked, rates go up a point or two and bands expanded.
Added to that watch tax credits and then there will be the introduction of carbon taxes and the like.

We are in major cr** and we are going to suffer.

Also has anyone noticed how over the last year or so the number of people calling for water charges has increased and they are increasingly getting airtime.

NewDubliner

Lplated wrote: »

unlike the many private sector people who will have to take the defined contribution blow that the current market conditions will entail.

But they're entitled to the contributory social-welfare pension which is index-linked and guaranteed by the government: right?

Hellm0

Hurray, a return to the times of yor when us peasants could never truly own our own land. That's just what we need, more landlords (except of course now the landlord is our own government, exacting a tribute on behalf of the already wealthy).

SeanW

ardmacha wrote: »

Surely if someone works hard all their life and have a nice car for themselves, we shouldn't be encouraging them to give this nice car up for something considered 'more appropriate'.

Just as motor tax goes from €150 to €2000, house tax could have several bands, with McMansions paying more. This could, like the motor tax, be related to the new BER energy rating.

This smacks of elitism.

What you're effectively saying is that if someone lives in a house that's 'above their station,' income wise for any reason, they should be chased out of it by higher property taxes? What you're suggesting is elitist and unjust.

Your comparison to the car tax is logically insolvent for three reasons:
1) If you can't afford the tax on a polluting car, changing down is not a very painful process - go to a dealer, trade in, change over the insurance, voila. No muss, no fuss. I'm sure you'll agree that even with deregulation and no stamp duty, trading down in your home is a bigger undertaking.
2) With the most recent reorganisation of tax bands, you pay based on CO2 emissions rather than engine size. So now you can have a nice car with a nice powerful engine, provided it's C02-efficient.
3) Changes are known in advance - cars generally are not inherited, gifted etc, and when you buy your car you know the tax schema that applied at that time - pre July-2008 cars, tax by engine size, post July-2008, tax by CO2 figures.
Nobody had the rug pulled out from under them with new or raised taxes pulled out of thin air.

I've seen property tax systems in operation and they're not pretty. I have a relative in the U.S. who pays $6,000 per year in property tax on a house half the size of the average Irish bungalow, and that's after a senior citizens discount. Tax sales are common, where when someone falls behind on their property taxes, the municipality will simply take the property and sell it at auction for in some cases no more than the taxes owed.

For the above reasons I remain implacably opposed to the introduction of property tax and if riots were necessary to prevent them, I'd be up for it.

I would much prefer the government reverse the McCreevy era tax cuts that fueled inflation, destroyed our competitiveness in the first place and left the public finances in the mess they're in and also take an axe to our bloated, fat lazy and overpriced public sector.
Read this thread on the Learning to Drive forum, for just one example (the driver testing service) of how we pay waaaaaaaaaaaay over the odds for public services that don't work. (Yet the RSA wants to expand this with staged licenses and multi-test licensing polices, making a big mess even bigger). Introduce new legislation to ensure that public service users and taxpayers are not left defenceless against this kind of nonsense, as patients, driving test applicants, school students etc are now.
Sack 1/2 the admin staff and middle managers of the HSE, many of whom didn't exist in the old health boards.
Ruthlessly seek out further spending that doesn't provide value for money and eliminate it.

mirror mirror

IF this tax is brought in,what happens if people cant afford to pay it,what happens if people refuse to pay it ? im sure the wanker banker who brought it up will have no worries financially about paying it:eek:

vengeancepuppy

Lplated wrote: »

Well considering that the public servant will be guaranteed his pension on his looming retirement, he might look on the property tax as a very insignificant contribution towards his retirement years.... unlike the many private sector people who will have to take the defined contribution blow that the current market conditions will entail.

Okay, so what happens if this worker is NOT close to retirement? Or what if the retirement is a year away, where the property tax will put the person in a situation with no solution? Or what if the pension is about... 500 a month?

Would you intend the government to legislate for all these eventualities when there's a working PAYE system already?

old boy

i saw on the tv3 news @5.30 the minister for squander saying that a property tax was not coming in,
i saw on the rte news @ 6.00 clown cowen saying it was not ruled out.
does the gov not know what it is doing, or going to do, f.f.s.:eek:

mirror mirror

lets massacre every fuc.ng one of the overpaid useless swine

Boggle

For the above reasons I remain implacably opposed to the introduction of property tax and if riots were necessary to prevent them, I'd be up for it.

Like I said I'll bring some extra bats. We need a good riot in this country at this stage - just to put the pr1cks in their place... and to give us something to smile about afterwards in the overpriced pub!!

Anyway, this is the line they dare not cross because...

What you're effectively saying is that if someone lives in a house that's 'above their station,' income wise for any reason, they should be chased out of it by higher property taxes? What you're suggesting is elitist and unjust.

... is exactly what it means and I, for one aint having it.

Try living somewhere with property taxes for a while and see what its like.

Mr.Micro

In all seriousness I do believe that a property tax will be introduced and most people will have to pay it, and others at least a proportion of it. It will be political dynamite but hey if FF are not going to be elected again for 10 years or so what the hell?

The problem I have with it, is that say 1000 euro per house is the taxe or rate, it will go to the exchequer, to be given to the same incompetents that are currently running the country ( into the ground IMO). Now that would be like throwing good money after bad.

Jamar

If there is a property tax, I think that a big house should cost more than a small house. There will have to be some measure of big: bedrooms, size, cost, some combination of them. (There was a window tax in Ireland at one point; the poll tax is another way to measure this).

I think there should be tax relief.
If you have paid 20,000 stamp duty last year, it would be unfair to now start to tax the property. So, that would be the first relief.

I would argue relief for each person living in the house. Not just families, but also house shares, making it cheaper for those who probably find money hard to come by - young single people starting out and families.

Perhaps students and the aged could also receive more of a relief/exemption.

Those who are in the position of caring for the disabled (and elderly) should also receive higher relief.

However, I would see no reason to give anyone relief based on lower income. People's income is already subject to tax.

This scheme does have the side-effect of being more onerous on those living in big houses by themselves. It would also penalise unoccupied houses.

I think this is better than a flat 1000E per house! I also think it's better than the current stamp duty tax, which makes moving very difficult. And it's probably better than increasing income tax.

Liam Byrne

With all due respects Jamar, you're coming across similar to a Fianna Failure TD at the moment, because what you've just posted is completely different to what you said earlier.

Just as the bare essential required to live in this country should not be taxed (the scum rolled back the "1% tax on everyone" to excluded the bare minimum wage), someone living in a basic house that meets their needs should not be taxed.

Also, bear in mind that we are ALREADY being "taxed" on our houses courtesy of the Fianna Failures and their now off-the-hook banking buddies......houses that should have been worth maybe 200K were hiked up to 300K, and we're paying interest on the 300K.

Like I said earlier, get the cash back IMMEDIATELY from those bankers and directors who rode the system, and THEN maybe we'll listen to any approach for paying THE REST.

But Mr Cowen and your bunch of scummy followers, DO NOT expect US to pay on the treble for your mistakes! :mad:

nesf

Lads could you please rise above calling the followers of FF scum and similar. I appreciate that this is a very emotive topic and that it's hard to bite your tongue and not speak your mind on them but I would like to remind you that you can tear into FF, their populist policies and all that without degenerating to using terms like scum to describe them.

nesf

jmayo wrote: »

It will be a tad ironic that the government that brings back in a residential property tax is primarily made up of the party that removed it in the first place in 1977.

The ironing would indeed be delicious. It's going to happen in some form and it won't be popular. I think people need to face up to the fact that our current Government expenditure can't be matched without either harsh cutbacks in services or substantial tax increases (substantial given the last decade rather than substantial by 80's standards).

We realistically need to see a reduction in the public sector pay bill (from top to bottom, we can't get away with just penalising the top earners anymore), cuts to some extent in services and taxation rises that will affect most people not just the top 30% of earners. None of these will be popular and FF will be hung out to dry for doing it but it's not likely that we'll see a FF led Government again in the next two terms (unless FG/Lab really screw up) so hopefully they'll act in the nation's best interests rather than what best pleases the mob. They haven't had to have a political backbone for a decade because of overflowing Government coffers, over the next 6-12 months we'll see if they actually have one left after all the pampering.

Calhoun

Mr.Micro wrote: »

In all seriousness I do believe that a property tax will be introduced and most people will have to pay it, and others at least a proportion of it. It will be political dynamite but hey if FF are not going to be elected again for 10 years or so what the hell?

The problem I have with it, is that say 1000 euro per house is the taxe or rate, it will go to the exchequer, to be given to the same incompetents that are currently running the country ( into the ground IMO). Now that would be like throwing good money after bad.

You would hope that the dynamite would blow the foundation of the current goverment. I know there is not much better option out there but come on how much is enough before people start pulling a France .

Calhoun

nesf wrote: »

We realistically need to see a reduction in the public sector pay bill (from top to bottom, we can't get away with just penalising the top earners anymore), cuts to some extent in services and taxation rises that will affect most people not just the top 30% of earners. None of these will be popular and FF will be hung out to dry for doing it but it's not likely that we'll see a FF led Government again in the next two terms (unless FG/Lab really screw up) so hopefully they'll act in the nation's best interests rather than what best pleases the mob. They haven't had to have a political backbone for a decade because of overflowing Government coffers, over the next 6-12 months we'll see if they actually have one left after all the pampering.

Couldnt have put it better myself time to show backbone. All the increased taxes ect wouldnt be as bad if it was a case that nearly everyone would feel the brunt of it and steps had been taken to reduce the unrequired spending in the public sector.

As it is stands though i dont know if they have the backbone to go chase down the unions an drive the needed cuts in pay and headcount that is needed.

worded

Morlar wrote: »

On the subject of cuts and where to make them surely we could look at where all the money goes ? The HSE would be high up on that list in my view. Also the annuall cost of repeated legal appeals related to failed asylum bids.

+1

worded

dodgyme wrote: »

3./ Those with second homes should be hit but those with 3,4,5+ houses should be crucified. Where I live one guy owns 10 houses. These f**kers have socially engineered housing estates they have bought into and are the cold face of ar*ehole greed in this country, when young people were being screwed to afford a house over their head.

Its these fcukers that caused prices to go too high.
Screw them I say.

Lplated

vengeancepuppy wrote: »

Okay, so what happens if this worker is NOT close to retirement? Or what if the retirement is a year away, where the property tax will put the person in a situation with no solution? Or what if the pension is about... 500 a month?

Would you intend the government to legislate for all these eventualities when there's a working PAYE system already?

My original point was more related to the consistent stance taken by public servants and their unions - we can't be touched. I just found it slightly ironic that that stance managed to transfer itself into a discussion on property tax. We're all becoming painfully aware (to the tune of about 48%) what 'public service' actually means, I just hadn't realised that it meant a free pass in relation to everything else in society as well.

Now that you've changed the goalposts a bit, I'm wouldn't have thought retirement or closeness to it should make any difference to the property tax. It would most likely be measured on property value with opt outs based on ability to pay.

Any legislation will probably exclude those earning under a certain level, and of course, exclude all public servants. Those poor people suffer enough already.

NewDubliner

Lplated wrote: »

My original point was more related to the consistent stance taken by public servants and their unions - we can't be touched.

Is this true? Did they really say that, or are you deliberately misrepresenting their position to suit your argument?

vengeancepuppy

The public sector gets accused of not doing their work properly, having guaranteed jobs, a guaranteed pension. With benchmarking swinging around so much private sector turns green with envy every time it seems like public sector workers are getting a better deal than they do in their current job.

But think about all the idiots in the private sector - bankers, who killed the world economy by giving ridiculous loans just so they can have their monthly bonus. Eircom, who continuously use scare tactics to sell their phonewatch alarms. There are loads of examples.

I'm specifically mentioning public sector because I know someone in this particular situation, I also knew that mentioning the public sector will inevitably bring out someone who will say, "Aw, we dont' care about them!"

Yes, legislation will probably exclude those unable to pay the tax but there will be borderline cases where people get screwed anyway. Why why why why why do we need property tax when the government can up PAYE? Why commit political suicide on top of it all?