A chara, – One clear aspect of our ongoing housing crisis in the capital is that we have young families stuck in apartments unable to find family homes and empty-nesters in family homes who might like to downsize but are perhaps waiting for prices to rise before selling.
The two interests are not necessarily consistent as the hard-pressed young family needs to be able to buy at a reasonable price.
Rather than bemoaning the seemingly irresolvable problem, could we not start looking for solutions within the existing framework?
One idea might be to incentivise the selling side by, for instance, temporarily suspending capital gains tax (CGT) on the sales of family homes for a period.
The effect of a suspension of CGT collections would be significant for those who bought some time ago and for whom current price levels are still far beyond their initial investment. This taxation measure would give the seller the increased proceeds of sale that they may be seeking and at the same time stabilise rising prices. The loss to the exchequer could be made up for by the increased economic activity. – Is mise,
DARA McNULTY,
Loreto Abbey,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.