Ah, I love it. So who decides what your home is ‘worth’ ?!!
The unions are going to blow a gasket when they get the details of what BL is planning for middle and low income earners.
The union obviously!
Simple equation, if you are in the union your house is worth less than 600k, if you are not in the union your house is worth more than 600k
They value your house at €600k, you owe the bank €800k, you have had a pay cut and are struggling with the mortgage but can’t sell because of the negative equity and because noone will buy a house which is subject to property tax.
Oh this will be fun.
yeah, I think its fair to say that by the next budget,everything INCLUDING pensions will be made tax deductible at the standard rate.
Otherwise, the introduction of a new tax rate of say 48%, will actually mean the Government will be paying MORE money into people’s pensions, 48 cent in every euro instead of 41cent at present(excl PRSI)!
I just wonder what will happen mortgage interest relief on investment properties, will the unions argue that cash-strapped homeowners are only receiving tax relief on their mortgage interest, whereas jet-setting investors receive mortgage interest relief at their marginal rate which will be going up shortly to 48%.
Interesting times ahead for the Government if they introduce this new higher tax rate!
If this tax is to be introduced, there’ll be a scramble to reduce house valuations - which will likely be required on your tax return. Clever.
I smell Alan Ahearne’s influence in this. Good. Now make it so.
I think the Government are now listening to the right people. As usual the devil’s in the detail, the grading will be critical. Try and keep the national average out and move up from there I expect. Still, very positive if the story’s true.
Nothing wrong with that but I object to this social partnership nonsense.
The government were elected to make decisions, not the social partners.
The vast majority of this country is not unionized. Therefor why should the social partners have a part in making the decisions that affect the the whole country?
What point are you trying to make about private sector workers who haven’t suffered pay cuts?
There isn’t mortgage interest relief on investment properties.
Interest is tax deductable just like any legitimate business expense.
-Rd
Not every private sector worker has taken a paycut ergo not every public sector worker should be required to take one. They didn’t care whether “every” private sector worker got pay rises in the boom though.
I don’t get what one has to do with the other.
If I worked for a company that was losing 18 million a day, I’d expect to have to either take a pay cut, or find a new job.
I wouldn’t be looking at employees of another company and saying “they’re not taking a pay cut, why should I?”
Public sector workers in the main are unlikely to have to find a new job, so they have to accept pay cuts.
Their employer can’t afford to keep paying them.
If they want to work for someone that isn’t cutting pay, they should find a company that’s run by someone who knows how to run a company.
Sooner or later the dumbass policies that Fianna Fail have used to stop the state’s employees from striking will catch up on the state, and then we’ll all really be in trouble. If someone else from the outside has to take over a bankrupt nation then public sector workers will long for the days of a few percent tax deductable pension levy.
-Rd
No-one believes that every single worker in the private sector is suffering. You said you’re for action because of this. Action to what end though?
They don’t have anything to do with one another. Unfortunately the government is incompetent at managing this issue and the notions of “we’re not to blame!” and “social solidarity” are allowed to dominate the issue.
For every private sector job loss 10 more people are terrified of losing theirs. Nobody knows if their job is safe and pretty much everyone expects to see their pay reduced in real terms over the next year or two.
That’s before you even get into the disaster in the pension funds.
You can try the “Ah shure it’s not so bad!” thing but it’ll only play to public sector folks.
Well done, you’ve spotted the flaw.
It is, of course, a well-known fact that for any property, chattel, or service it is impossible to determine a precise or approximate monetary value. The Mona Lisa might, as we all know, only be worth 50p or a cuddle with Lindy Maguire behind the bike sheds.
Nice going, dude, I’m sure they’ll be dropping the plan immediately!
Surely this should have become obvious to them when the Revenue stopped taking anybody’s money because the precise value of the Euro was impossible to determine.
€1 = €1, pretty simple stuff.
Property and wealth taxes have intrinsic flaws since their value is based on what you’d likely get if you were to sell them. They’re also problematic since that value provides you with nothing until you do actually sell it so even if you live in a house “worth” €10m it doesn’t mean you have any cash monies with which to pay a tax unless that asset is being used for some revenue generating purpose.
Let’s just copy Switzerland’s property tax regime wholesale and quit fiddling about. Pretending that there’s magic ju-ju to property that prevents it from being valued via a reasonably-accurate formula is just silly and fools nobody.
Pretending that there aren’t enormous problems with valuing property for the purposes of taxation, that property taxes don’t have undesirable secondary effects (like people not being able to afford to live in their homes if a bunch of rich people move into their area) and that the market value of property bares any relation to the cost of providing services to it is pretty silly and fools nobody.
Taxing it simply because it’s there and you want some of it is pretty much the worst possible motivation for tax policy.
That problem is usually resolved over time. Taxes should be levied on the basis of the average over a period of years - say 5 or 10, to even out the tax liability. People should also be entitled to average their property tax over a period of years -marking time with the market. A tax credit and/or exemption to the transaction cost of moving would also balance the burden.
Taxing it because it’s there [And cannot be moved] is the best possible taxation policy. Doing that correctly, and well, is another matter entirely.
Surely not beyond the wit of man though … ???