I support the property tax

IF you are opposed to the property tax to be introduced next year in place of the hated household charge, I would advise you not to read any further. That’s because you are likely to get very annoyed. You see, I happen to support the idea of a property tax.
I am also in favour of water charges and I have always supported charges for disposing of our domestic waste.
If you are against all these things, you are liable to get very angry with me and start writing letters to the editor complaining about me.
It will not do you or me any good for you to lose your temper at this stage. If you are still with me, my advice to you is to hold your tongue and your powder until details of the tax are announced in the budget next December.
You can expect to be very annoyed indeed by then – not at me but at the Government and specifically at Phil Hogan, the minister who is in charge of imposing all those local rates and charges. That is if Mr Hogan is still in office by then. But even if Big Phil has departed from the Cabinet by next December, you will still have to pay a property tax.
If you were annoyed at the €100 household charge earlier this year, you are going to be at least twice as annoyed at the new property tax. The new tax is going to cost you at least twice as much as the household charge is costing.
As a matter of fact, the Government is studying a report, which suggests the average property tax will be as much as €1,000 per person.
The Government is telling us very little about this tax apart from a few unofficial leaks now and again in order to judge the reaction. But I don’t believe it will be able to collect even €200 from each of us, not to talk about €500 or €1,000. On top of that, you are also going to have to pay water charges along with other heavy increases in petrol, heating oil and in the cost of living generally. I just wonder how we are going to survive at all, at all.
Do you want to read on? Well you might wonder why I support all these local charges in these tough times.
First of all, I believe we should all pay for the services we are provided with. I mean all those of us who can afford to, should pay.
The problem then, of course, is the more people you have who cannot afford to pay, the more those who can afford it will have to pay. This is a vicious circle because a lot of those who are deemed to be able to afford to pay will not in reality be able to pay so only a minority will pay up.
Everybody talks about a fair and equitable system. But how can any system be fair if only a minority subscribe?
No wonder the Government is keeping so tight lipped on this proposed property tax. They don’t know how to implement it. But they know that no matter what they do, they are going to annoy a substantial number of people.
They made such a bags of the household charge, they are afraid to make an even bigger bags of the property tax. They would love to walk away from the issue like all previous governments for the last 30 years and more. But they can’t. The troika won’t let them.
The people that are going to be hardest hit are once again the middle classes. The rich have no problem. They can afford to pay anything. The poor will be looked after with waivers and exemptions of all kinds.
You can’t take blood out of a stone and I fear that most of the middle classes have already been bled dry.
Sinn Féin and the other left-wing parties tell us the rich are not paying enough and that if they were, everything in this country would be hunky dory. There might be some truth in that but it is only half true. It is not as simple as they are saying. The rich can afford to feck off to some other country with their wealth and leave the rest of us high and dry with even more taxes to pay.
If we don’t pay, we are going to be left without some vital local services. Look at what is happening now with the refusal or inability to pay the household charge. Local authorities up and down the country are going to have to try to survive with even less money than they had last year.
It is really annoying for those people who paid the household charge. They are being deprived of the same services as those who refused to pay. It will probably be the same for those who pay the new property tax.
I don’t think any two people will agree on what is a fair and equitable property tax. But it should surely be based on the value of the property.
However, what if you are unemployed but live in an expensive house you bought when you had a good job. Is it fair that you have to pay the same as your neighbour who is living in a similar type of house but has a good salary?
As far as water charges are concerned, I believe each should pay according to the volume of water he uses. Householders should pay refuse charges according to the amount of rubbish they produce.
There should no longer be flat charges.
Anyway, we should all be prepared to pay more for those services next year. If after paying, we still do not receive the services we have paid for, I will be among the first to show my annoyance outside the Dáil or Government Buildings.