Are you going to pay the household charge? [Part 1]

alastair

phil1nj wrote: »

All the rooms in my house are in use therefore I don't have a choice about activating rental income. And as said, there are laws to deal with this rental income (a point you keep conviently ignoring).

The wealth contained in my house (which was paid for by already heavily taxed money) is only accessed when I sell the house. True or false? Ro go back to your share example, no one pays any tax on shares until they are sold. Why should a property tax be the same? Since both are examples of wealth?


And I have engaged you in a civil manner. You on the other hand have sneered at and insulted myself other posters on here despite sayIng very little except the same old guff about households being examples of wealth and how this charge will go towards local services. Despite (IMHO ) both being untrue as Bourne out by arguments put towards you.

Arguments with no validity. 100% of the household charge goes to local authority funding - its clearly stated in the terms of the act allowing for the charge, and has been clearly articulated by the government from the beginning. If you insist on listening to ignorant pundits, all you'll take on board is ignorance.

As to accessing the wealth in your house, you can certainly access revenue from it through rental, if you want an equivalent of dividends, and there's no requirement that property be taxed by the same mechanisms as shares. Transaction (stamp) duty and, in limited circumstances, CGT applies at time of sale of a property, property tax is pretty much universally applied on an annual basis. Just because shares are taxed one way, doesn't mean everything is.

bgrizzley

.

alastair

Ghandee wrote: »

Why do you feel that Sam?

Realism?

Steven81

Was in renewing my drivers licence in Mullingar today and big queues there for people paying the household charge, mainly middle aged. Most were saying that they had to pay it as it would be taken one way or another and how they would do there bit to get the local economy back going again.

hondasam

Ghandee wrote: »

Why do you feel that Sam?

People power can, and will win the day.
,
If They start to try to forcibly remove it from accounts/wages or whatever, expect another mass campaign for the public to start doing in the north, pay cash were possible, workers strikes...etc etc etc.


There is more than than one way to skin a cat......

I assume they will bring in some law to make us pay or increase taxes or do what ever to get more money from us.
I'm not sure they can take it from out wages without us signing something or I hope not anyway. In the case of couples would they have to take half the payment from both wages?

alastair

hondasam wrote: »

I assume they will bring in some law to make us pay or increase taxes or do what ever to get more money from us.
I'm not sure they can take it from out wages without us signing something or I hope not anyway. In the case of couples would they have to take half the payment from both wages?

They're not likely to be garnishing wages for unpaid taxes - more likely to just apply owed taxes and accumulated fines on your house until its sold, and get it then. Only one person is liable as property owner iirc. I certainly paid ours as an individual, and the house is jointly owned.

Edit: just checked - all joint owners are liable - but only one person pays / uses their PPS number.

The_Thing

This new tax does nothing to foster a sense of 'value for money' in the Government, if anything it does the opposite, it leaves them off the hook when it comes to budgetary measures. Instead of forcing them to squeeze every last ounce of value out of the money they already get in the taxes we pay, they'll allways be of the opinion that the public can be bled for more and more.

We owe it to ourselves and future generations to stop them implimenting this new tax, if we do not it will embolden them to come up with other new taxes in years to come whenever they want more money.

Don't register \ Don't pay

hondasam

alastair wrote: »

They're not likely to be garnishing wages for unpaid taxes - more likely to just apply owed taxes and accumulated fines on your house until its sold, and get it then. Only one person is liable as property owner iirc. I certainly paid ours as an individual, and the house is jointly owned.

How do they decide who pays if the house is jointly owned? I know there will be fines and if the house is sold it has to be paid.
Can I ask you why did you pay? are you happy with paying and the fact it will rise next year?

DoesNotCompute

The_Thing wrote: »

Don't register \ Don't pay \ Don't drop the soap

Fixed your post.

My name is URL

DoesNotCompute wrote: »

Fixed your post.

Who'll be paying for all that wasted soap?

goz83

robbie7730 wrote: »

My point was not about how well the roads are maintained though.

Maintaining roads to a safe standard would be ok for me and I am sure most people would agree to that standard of maintenance. However, many of our roads are an absolute disgrace. What irks me the most is they they spend plenty on traffic lights for safe pedestrian crossings (sometimes within a hundred feet of each other), but they leave roads outside primary schools in a very dangerous condition for years. The road where I live has four primary schools and it looks like there was a war on the tarmac.

alastair wrote: »

100% of the household charge goes to local authority funding - its clearly stated in the terms of the act allowing for the charge, and has been clearly articulated by the government from the beginning.

Well I agree with you there alastair. 100% of the charge is going to pay for local services many of us enjoy/need. But that's only true because they are withdrawing the funds already going to pay for those services, which are paid via other taxes. There is also less funding needed for these services, because many of them have been privatised, or are/soon to be separately taxed (water charge).

alastair wrote: »

As to accessing the wealth in your house, you can certainly access revenue from it through rental, if you want an equivalent of dividends, and there's no requirement that property be taxed by the same mechanisms as shares. Transaction (stamp) duty and, in limited circumstances, CGT applies at time of sale of a property, property tax is pretty much universally applied on an annual basis. Just because shares are taxed one way, doesn't mean everything is.

Some of have children and don't have a spare room to rent.

alastair

hondasam wrote: »

How do they decide who pays if the house is jointly owned? I know there will be fines and if the house is sold it has to be paid.
Can I ask you why did you pay? are you happy with paying and the fact it will rise next year?

The owners decide who pays or acts as the front in payment. That would suggest that penalties are more likely to be linked to the property than the individual, when they arise.

I paid because I have no problem with property taxes (other than the flat rate, which is only temporary), and accept that we'll all need to pay more taxes to sort out the mess we're in. Obviously I'd rather not have to pay them, but there you go!

mikom

Steven81 wrote: »

Was in renewing my drivers licence in Mullingar today and big queues there for people paying the household charge, mainly middle aged. Most were saying that they had to pay it as it would be taken one way or another and how they would do there bit to get the local economy back going again.

Be better off spending it in the pub tbh.

Ghandee

DoesNotCompute wrote: »

Fixed your post.

Quality post man, quality.

alastair

goz83 wrote: »

Well I agree with you there alastair. 100% of the charge is going to pay for local services many of us enjoy/need. But that's only true because they are withdrawing the funds already going to pay for those services, which are paid via other taxes. There is also less funding needed for these services, because many of them have been privatised, or are/soon to be separately taxed (water charge).

That's all true, but at a minimum it now allows you to pay a portion of your tax in the knowledge it's not going to bankers or whatever. So you can go crazy fighting payment of all the other taxes!

hondasam

alastair wrote: »

The owners decide who pays or acts as the front in payment. That would suggest that penalties are more likely to be linked to the property than the individual, when they arise.

I paid because I have no problem with property taxes (other than the flat rate, which is only temporary), and accept that we'll all need to pay more taxes to sort out the mess we're in. Obviously I'd rather not have to pay them, but there you go!

Originally Posted by alastair
100% of the household charge goes to local authority funding - its clearly stated in the terms of the act allowing for the charge, and has been clearly articulated by the government from the beginning.

Are you sure about this? I thought it was just some of the funds collected.

What will we be asked to pay next year?

alastair

hondasam wrote: »

Are you sure about this? I thought it was just some of the funds collected.

What will we be asked to pay next year?

100% - it's in the legislation/act.

Who knows? More for sure.

jluv

The voice of the public speaking on the Late Late tonight and so far all no votes. Like myself have paid thousands when we built our houses for local services which we have not yet recieved. OAP's scared that they are going to be in trouble. People who are struggling through no fault of their own. The politicians spewing that "This is your country and my country and we need to support it". Why did you not support it when you had the money instead of earning big money for doing very little?.I HAVE paid for my local services already but YOU did not supply them. Why would anyone think I should pay again just because the money I and many others paid has been squandered. Please do not respond with we will not get out of this recession if we don't. Half the amount of jobs that politicians hold.Make them job share and hold them accountable.I bet it would bring in as much or more money as this tax. Whatever about myself who is holding out as a stance,imagine the fear some older people are facing...

Ghandee

The late late show debate went well for the yes camp:pac:

goz83

Fergus on the late late show said nobody would go to jail for not paying. So why threaten people with court? Are they bringing back the old whippings?

Frank Black

Ghandee wrote: »

The late late show debate went well for the yes camp:pac:

Yes, new taxes tend to be incredibly popular.

sonic85

all the government has to do is cut back on the waste and theyll claw back this charge and a lot more besides. i had a bit of a laugh watching the tossers like jim power on the Late Late talking about how theyve paid the charge since january - easy for them when theyre earning huge salaries. it must be nice to have zero financial worries

Davidson2k9

So at the end of it all if you don't pay the tax, you get fines and if you don't pay them nothing actually happens?

Bull**** tax anyway just a number off the top of their head "Oh give us €100 everyone for this eh, new tax"

Micky Dolenz

Davidson2k9 wrote: »

So at the end of it all if you don't pay the tax, you get fines and if you don't pay them nothing actually happens?

Bull**** tax anyway just a number off the top of their head "Oh give us €100 everyone for this eh, new tax"

and thats just this year, who knows what figure they'll pull out in years to come.

The_Thing

Ghandee wrote: »

The late late show debate went well for the yes camp:pac:

Yeah, I thought yer man was going to take out a begging bowl and get down on his knees near the end.

sonic85

dont know if this was posted already. interesting read.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1221/breaking6.html

The €100 a year household charge is likely to be replaced in a little more than a year by a comprehensive property tax, The Irish Times has learned.
The property tax will be on a graduated scale based on the size or value of a house and the details are due to be worked out over the next few months.

Under the terms of the EU-IMF programme, a graduated system of property tax was not due to be put in place until 2014 but Ministers have taken a decision to speed up the process.
The Government has approved a decision to establish an expert group to recommend an appropriate system of property tax which would be established on a graduated basis rather than a flat charge.

The expert group, which will be chaired by a representative of the Revenue Commissioners, is due to report back to Minister for the Environment and Local Government Phil Hogan by next April.
The Cabinet agreed to proceed to a quick decision on the basis of the report from the expert group with a view to having a comprehensive property tax system in place by 2013.

Whatever system is agreed by the Government, most householders will have to pay considerably more than the €100 flat charge for 2012 which is due to be paid by the end of next March.

Fine Gael deputy for Donegal North East Joe McHugh said this morning the new system would take into account people’s ability to pay. "There are people living in houses that are of high value but simply cannot pay. That needs to be taken into account. We need to have a fair and equitable system that is not just based on valuations."

Mr McHugh said it would be "more productive" for opposition TDs who are refusing to pay the household charge "to get involved in the debate for a fair system to be rolled out in 2013".

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh has described the proposed property tax as another attack on low and middle income earners. “A property tax based solely on the value of the property without taking account of the owner’s ability to pay is unfair,” he claimed.

“The Government is planning to introduce this charge at a time when thousands of homeowners are struggling to make ends meet and face the prospect of losing their homes,” he said. “This is the type of policy that ultimately ends with people living on the streets. It is immoral and irresponsible to introduce it in the current climate and in the format proposed.”

He said the Government should have introduced a wealth tax as proposed by his party, which he claimed would bring in €800 million while ensuring that only those who can afford to pay are made to pay.

The absence of a property tax is widely regarded by economists and policymakers as one of the weaknesses of the Irish tax system. One of the key ambitions of the EU-IMF programme is to widen the tax base so that extra taxes do not fall on work as the Government tries to raise extra revenue.

The Commission on Taxation, which reported in 2009, stated: “We consider that as a matter of general principle all property should be subject to recurrent taxation, either through the local government commercial rates system or an annual tax on residential property.”

The commission recommended a system of property tax that would raise €1.2 billion a year, which is eight times greater than the €160 million that will be raised by the €100 charge.

Under the commission’s proposed scheme a charge of €188 would be paid on houses valued at up to €150,000; €563 on houses between €150,000 and €300,000; €938 on houses up to €450,000; €1,313 on houses valued at up to €600,000; €1,699 on houses up to €750,000; €2,188 on houses valued at up to €1 million; €3,125 on houses up to €1.5 million and 0.25 per cent of the valuation on houses over that.

The commission’s calculations were based on 1.9 million houses paying the tax at a rate of 0.25 per cent to the midpoint of the valuation band. The report also did a calculation applying a rate of 0.3 per cent at the midpoint of the valuation band designed to raise €1.5 billion and the rates were higher again.

Under the scheme proposed by the commission, the current second home charge of €200 a year would be absorbed into the new property tax system.
The system proposed by the commission was based on self-assessment and whatever scheme is ultimately adopted by the Government is also likely to be on a self-assessment basis.

It is unlikely that the scheme to be adopted by the Government will be as onerous as that proposed by the commission, particularly given that there are local and European elections in 2014, the year after the charges are likely to come into effect.

Water charges are due to come into operation later in 2014 once the country has been fully metered as part of the programme to widen the tax base.

Residential property was subject to local government rates from the foundation of the State until 1978 when the system was abolished by Fianna Fáil after the party won power on the basis of a number of election promises, including the abolition of rates, made in its 1977 election manifesto.

A residential property tax was introduced by a Fine Gael-Labour Party government five years later. It was based on a charge of 1.5 per cent of the value of a house when the market value exceeded a specified rate.
The tax, which was based on self-assessment, never raised a significant amount of revenue, mainly due to lack of compliance. It was abolished in 1996.

650gs

The Local Government (Household Charge) Act 2011 provides for a number of exemptions and waivers from payment of the household charge. The exemptions from payment of the household charge are -

· Residential properties that are part of the trading stock of a business and have not been sold or been the source of any income since construction,


· Residential property owned by a Minister of the Government, a housing authority or the Health Service Executive,


· Voluntary and co-operative housing,


· Residential property subject to commercial rates and wholly used as a dwelling,


· Residential property owned by certain charities or discretionary trusts, and


· Residential property which an owner has vacated due to long-term mental or physical infirmity (e.g. elderly person that has moved into a nursing home).

The waivers which apply concern -

· Owners of residential property entitled to mortgage interest supplement from the Department of Social Protection, and


· Owners of houses in certain unfinished housing estates.

There are no exemptions or waivers in the legislation in respect of owners of residential property who are in receipt of social welfare payments other than that concerning mortgage interest supplement as set out above.

650gs

Be sure you read the third line down.
A real joke

Ghandee

And again Ferguscompared the tax where you get: nothing for your money your not already paying for,
Against rates in the north, where you get waste collection, no emergency service charges, free health care (for every one), lower motor tax, no tolled roads, lower rate of VAT rates, etc etc etc,

There are no comparisons Fergus!

Rates = something for your money.
Household charge = nothing for your money! (that you're not already paying for)

jluv

650gs wrote: »

Be sure you read the third line down.
A real joke

Seems it was noted already and after discussion this is now not going to be the case. But if we were not all discussing and being informed about what is happening then this would most likely have happened.