2021 Irish Property Market chat - *mod warnings post 1*

We need a separate property tax- ontop of a residents tax- the residents tax to pay for all local authority expenditure- the property tax to fund our national debt.

Vis-a-vis our national debt- even in this era of ultra low interest rates, we still paid almost 8 billion in interest payments on our national debt in 2020. People do not seem to have any cognisance of this- the average person walking down the street refuses on a point of principle to look at the bigger picture, and only sees whats in it for them.

The average person- has gotten it in their noggin, that printing money is both viable and indeed, preferable, to anyone paying down debt. This story/myth has been peddled by various parts of the political spectrum and the media- and by god they are going to howl when the day of reckoning comes.

I personally think that a reasonable property tax- based on a regularly reappraised value of the unit (say 1.5% of the value for example) is fair and reasonable- providing it is accompanied by a fair and reasonable residential tax- which would be completely ringfenced by local authority jurisdictions- so Dara in his McMansion in Leitrim- gets off lightly on the property tax- but pays the true cost of providing services, facilities and amenities to their McMansion in the arse end of nowhere. Meanwhile Mary and Mark in Dublin- get hit badly on the property tax- but get a break on their residential tax.

The first time round- there was no appetite to look outside the box on the 'property tax' and include an element of dwelling size in the calculation- when it was to pay for local authorities. Now we have an opportunity to revisit that travesty.

The harder thing of all- will be selling this to the Irish who have a fixation with owning property. Well, owning property- is going to be more expensive in future, come what may..........

A 5k per annum property tax charge- might reduce property prices by 10-15%? I don't necessarily think this would be a bad thing.

Let Revenue purloin all income- in a similar manner to PAYE, but to include people outside of the PAYE net- they are quite remarkably good at it after all.

So a whole new tax- paid by property residents- alongside a fair and reasonable property tax paid by property owners- to reflect both property prices, and also the actual costs of servicing local authority - to pay back a chunk of national debt (or to at least pay the interest on it).

The other mistruth being peddled- is how we can let inflation diminish the debt- well, in an era of low inflation- or negative inflation- that just doesn't happen. Did the EU manage to breach a 2% inflation level at any stage in the last 15 years?

We are so incredibly screwed.