The primary purpose of taxation is to raise revenue for the State. But there are other good reasons, too. Some taxes are specifically designed as levers to encourage or discourage certain behaviours for the public good.
One such lever is the Vacant Homes Tax (VHT), which was introduced in the Finance Act of 2022. Initially set at three times a property’s Local Property Tax (LPT) charge, the tax applies to residential properties that have been lived in for fewer than 30 days in a given year.
In the midst of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State, there is a clear and obvious public interest in ensuring that every possible avenue is explored in order to increase the supply of homes. Ensuring that vacant properties are made available for sale or rent is therefore entirely logical.
In advance of the introduction of VHT, some estimates based on census returns put the number of vacant dwellings in the tens of thousands. In fact, Just 3,500 homes were found to be liable for VHT. (It should be noted that much of the vacancy and dereliction which blights Ireland’s cities and towns relates to commercial sites. The tax does not apply to derelict or uninhabitable properties.) The rate of VHT was increased from three to five times a property’s base LPT charge in Budget 2024, which applies to the period from November 2023 to October of this year.
Booker Prize 2024 longlist: Irish author Colin Barrett makes 13-strong list
All Together Now music festival 2024: Stage line-ups and times, ticket information, how to get there and more
The homeless families displaced by the Paris Olympics: ‘They feel kicked around like a ball’
Not too hot and not too crowded: six great places for a late summer holiday
The Department of Finance has said that the key objective of the tax is “to increase the supply of homes available for rent or purchase, by encouraging the owners of vacant residential properties to bring those properties back into use”. It remains unclear whether that objective is being met.
At the current rate, a vacant Dublin house valued at €500,000 would be subject to VHT of €2100 this year. With house prices currently rising by more than 7 per cent per annum, the tax bill would be dwarfed by the owner’s capital gain in the same period.
A briefing document provided to Minister for Finance Jack Chambers by his officials in June addressed the question of whether the rate was too low. It reiterated that the purpose of VHT is not to raise revenue, and that care must be taken to get the “balance right between achieving the objective of encouraging the use of available housing, without excessively penalising a limited group of property owners.”
That is merely stating the obvious. The real answer to the question of whether the current rate of tax is too low will only come with accurate data on whether the number of vacant properties across the country has been falling since the introduction of the tax. If that proves not to be the case, VHT is clearly not working and should be either raised to an effective level or abolished.