Revenue treatment of vendors further disadvantages Dubliners – Mitchell

 

“A commitment was given on Revenue’s own website that valuations given in good faith after reference to then existing house prices would be accepted as valid until 2016.

“No one could have anticipated a 25% increase in house prices in a single year and in parts of Dublin the increase has been even more than that.

“In the cases brought to my attention in Dublin South vendors are being required to pay on current prices rather than on the 2013 valuations, despite the fact that the valuations were entirely accurate in 2013.

“Dubliners have already been disproportionately penalised by the system of property tax chosen but this arbitrary treatment is a further disadvantage to Dubliners. Demanding one and half years back payment of a shortfall is particularly pernicious when people are already both stressed and vulnerable and perhaps desperate to sell their house. The Revenue demand is like a gun to the head as failure to pay means the sale cannot go through.

“It is completely unacceptable and unreasonable that any tax should be based on some unknown future value and I would call on the Minister to make it clear to Revenue that the Property tax system must be implemented as announced.

“Anything else makes a farce of the promise that 2013 valuations would be maintained for three years. As now being implemented, valuations in Dublin are effectively being revised annually.”