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Revenue has extended the opening hours for its local property tax (LPT) helpline after receiving over 12,000 calls per day this week.
In a statement released on Monday, Revenue said that the helpline was extremely busy last week in advance of the November 7th deadline for filing local property tax returns.
According to Revenue, there has been a further surge in the number of calls made to the helpline, and 1,600 people have tried to call the helpline in advance of its opening time.
Revenue has extended the helpline’s opening hours for this Wednesday and Thursday from 8am to 8pm, in an effort to try and combat this issue.
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Revenue say that further extended opening hours will be considered later on this week if the level of demand remains high.
Mornings are the busiest time for calls, according to Revenue, and they advised people struggling to get through to ring again later on in the day if they can.
Revenue added that it wanted to highlight the top three reasons why property owners are contacting the LPT helpline.
They said that people do not need a hard copy letter about their LPT in order to pay the tax, as the information needed is available online.
Revenue said that users who have an online account may have received a soft copy, or online-only version, of the letter in their My Documents folder in myAccount, or in their ROS Inbox.
The information in this letter is also available on the property owner’s LPT record, which can be viewed when submitting their LPT Return in myAccount, ROS or the LPT Online Portal.
Another common issue is new property owners who are not currently registered with Revenue for LPT.
These people can self-register their property by clicking on the Register New Property link on the Property Services Card in myAccount or in the Other Services section on the ROS homepage.
Revenue also said that property owners can change their own valuation bands without informing them.
“There is no requirement to contact Revenue where property owners determine that their property falls into a different valuation band than the valuation band indicated on Revenue’s online valuation guide or the valuation band used for the purposes of their Notice of LPT Estimate,” Revenue said in their statement.
“Property owners should select the relevant valuation band that applies to the property’s market value, as determined by the property owner, when submitting their LPT Return.”