Revenue deadline for filing property tax passes

The deadline for filing property tax with the Revenue Commissioners has passed. The deadline was extended last night for property tax registrations until 8pm today following a last-minute surge in registrations.

Online registrations were running at 10,000 per hour to Revenue’s website while a further 8,000 registered by phone yesterday.

Earlier today, the chairwoman of the Revenue Commissioners Josephine Feehily has confirmed the owners of more than 1.5 million properties had filed property tax returns as of this afternoon.

Ms Feehily said when around 160,000 properties for which local authorities or housing associations had responsibility s come in in the last few days,” she said. The target is for half of the year 2013.

She said 73 per cent of those who had filed returns did so online while 22 per cent posted back the form receivwere included, the figure rose to close to 1.68 million properties.

“I have no reason to believe the €250 million estimate won’t be achieved…a colossal proportion of the total haed from Revenue. Five per cent filed over the phone and the figure for deferrals or exemptions was a “smaller than expected” three per cent.

Ms Feehily said Revenue had already begun identifying “non-engagers” to follow-up, beginning with those in the PAYE sector. Reminder letters will be sent, with Revenue staff turning their attention to that matter “in the next 10 days or so”. They will be given a “very short while” to pay online.

She said if the self-employed look for a tax clearance certificate after July they will not get it.

Ms Feehily said she had been surprised at how many people had paid up front.

Referring to the €100 household charge, Ms Feehily said: “It’s not going away”. She said those who had not paid owed €144 if they complied before July 1st, but the amount would rise to €200 “when it comes to us in July”.

She was speaking at the Oireachtas committee on finance, public expenditure and reform, where she was also asked about claims of a special tax deal with Apple.

“Revenue doesn’t do special deals on tax rates for any company of any size,” she said.