Sir, – Your recent letter writers understand the gross lack of fairness in the property tax proposal. The suggestion of making an allowance for people who bought homes during the period starting in 2004 is a good idea, but goes nowhere near far enough. Some wrote of paying stamp duty of €30,000 or even as high as €70,000.
Having worked in England since 1966, my wife and I bought our house outside Dublin in 2002 but were unable to occupy it until November 2003.
The price was much more than we could now get for it and we still had to find another €73,000 in stamp duty. When we asked why such a large figure, we were told there would be no property tax or water charge, as all those services were paid from the large amounts coming in from stamp duty.
That money was capital from our savings up to retirement, and if wisely invested, could have increased our income by nearly €2,000 a year on top of our pensions.
We still don’t know how much of the new charges we are facing, but if they amount to €730 a year, our stamp duty would pay that for the next 100 years! Even if the new charges are as high as €2,000 a year, it would be 36 years before that fund runs out. By the year 2038, we shall both be gone. Meanwhile we are still not getting any income from those saved euros.
So we are paying more than twice over out of our retirement income.
Surely there should be a rebate for any stamp duty paid since the final abolition of domestic rates, and a similar allowance for water charges on the same basis.
We did our bit for this country by finding employment abroad, and bringing the gains from our work and our foreign pensions to spend back here on retirement. Between the two of us we get only €15.30 a week from Irish pension funds. While we agree that everybody should contribute to the costs of life here, we have paid ours in advance. The State has had our money for 10 years.
Of course the State needs to raise money, but there has to be a fairer way and not one that drags us back to outdated and unfair policies.– Yours, etc,