Madam, – John McManus is on the ball article on property tax and stamp duty (“Property levy a taxing issue for homeowners”, Business Opinion, February 2nd).
Anyone who has paid stamp duty in the past few years of inflated house prices will have already have paid more than enough tax on their property. It is an iniquitous tax at the best of times and a tax on free movement.
My wife and I paid more than €100,000 in stamp duty (from already taxed income, remember) in December 2007 for a two-bedroom mews house in the middle of Dublin. Of course the house is now worth a lot less than it was, but I can live with that. That’s the market. But I am not being taxed three times! At a proposed property tax rate of €1,000 a year, that’s my tax paid for the next 100 years, so the Revenue can give me a shout in 3007. As I am 63 now, I won’t mind getting the tax demand then. Alternatively, they can give me a rebate of €98,000 now and I will happily pay €1,000 a year.
I don’t mind doing my share, but in this case enough is more than enough. If property tax is brought in, some serious gesture has to be made to compensate people who have paid stamp duty in the past few years, or there may well be trouble ahead.– Yours, etc,