Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

property tax

On Hogan’s Stand – or how to introduce an interim property charge fairly

The imminent introduction of water and property charges has sparked anger among most Irish people, not least because as flat charges, or poll taxes, they are unfair. This post outlines a better way of introducing an interim property charge, namely by breaking down the country into ten different bands based on land value, and then presents a map of the bands, based on 200,000 daft.ie ads in 2009 and 2010. Such an interim system would be significantly fairer and could be tailored to bring in €1.5bn when fully running. Read more

Falling house prices or not, Ireland needs a property tax

This post reviews the findings in the latest Daft.ie House Price Report, for Q2 2010, finding news for both optimists and pessimists in average prices and the level of transactions. The report’s commentary is by Jim Power, who discusses the need for a property tax. The remainder of the post reviews the arguments in favour of a property tax in Ireland and recommends the introduction of a land value tax. Read more