Madam, – It appears that by levying taxes on second homes the Government is setting out to punish the very people who they so openly courted during the boom years, (“New €200 tax to be paid on over 200,000 second properties”, June 25th).
At the time of purchasing a second home, buyers paid stamp duty at a fixed percentage of the price. This stamp duty, together with the VAT on the various professional services involved in completing a property transaction, have already provided the Government with a nice little windfall on those purchases. This revenue stream fuelled the economic boom which Fianna Fáil was more than happy to take credit for at the time. To levy a property tax on top of the stamp duty is surely a form of double-taxation. It is inappropriate and unfair to tax the same asset twice, regardless of the current economic climate.
Furthermore, owners of rental properties already pay tax on rental income, while holiday home owners should surely be rewarded and not penalised for their patriotism in choosing to spend their holiday euros at home rather than overseas. After all, the Government is very quick to criticise those who dare shop for groceries north of the Border.
Contrary to the inevitable bluster, this is not a “hard decision” but a very easy one, which will see already-stretched homeowners bullied and harassed into paying for Government mismanagement and incompetence.
When is this going to end? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – A proposed annual property tax of €200 on investment properties in the middle of a recession, when for many it is difficult to secure a letting or meet the mortgage repayments?
When the reverse was the situation and we were in the midst of an economic boom, why wasn’t there a similar tax in place? Instead there were tax incentives galore to promote the sale of investment properties, as if the then over-heated property market needed any further fuel or stoking.
The abject stupidity at play here, in policy terms, is astonishing. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – With regard to the IMF’s recent bleak predictions on the Irish economy shrinking by 13.5 per cent (Page 1, June 25th), I note that on April 10th, 2008 your paper reported the same august organisation’s prediction of 3 per cent growth in 2009.
You reported on December 7th, 2007 that another respected organisation, the OECD, predicted growth of 4.5 per cent for this year (now predicting 9.8 per cent decline).
If you are going to continue publishing such obvious, wild stabs in the dark about the future, have you tried asking psychics? I’m sure they will be just as accurate.
Otherwise stop worrying, they are just blind-guessing and may well be just as inaccurate as they have been in the past. – Yours, etc,