Half of home owners boycotting tax, despite targetting of multiple properties
A lot has been made of reports that registration of properties for household tax has passed one million, however the most important fact is being skipped over by the media: the boycott against the home tax remains incredibly strong.
Registration figures represent properties, not people. The increase since June is solely related to multiple properties owned by the same people.
The government consciously targeted second and third homeowners with the recent letter campaign. In fact, the response of around 40,000 registrations is unimpressive as it’s only a fraction of multiple properties owned by people.
The reality is almost half of all liable homeowners have still not registered — a serious problem for the Labour/Fine Gael coalition and an unenforceable rate for implementation.
This is more than was achieved by Poll Tax non payment which started off at 15% in the first year, 1989, and which only reached 45% boycott in the year of its abolition.
There is a steely determination among non-payers not to be bullied into paying this tax. People realise that between property and water taxes, the charge will quickly rise to over €1,000 per year. The government’s persuading and threatening letters will only re-inforce people’s determination to resist.
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