AN IRISH ANTI-IMMIGRATION activist has falsely suggested that Muslims are entitled to exclusive financial offers, and do not have to pay taxes on mortgages.

However, Revenue have told The Journal that there are no special rules for “halal mortgages”, but that the Islamic finance equivalents of mortgages are subject to stamp duty and are taxed in an equivalent way to conventional financial transactions.

“Kebab shops and vape shops are going up,” Anthony Casey says in a video posted on his social media accounts on 28 June. “It must be because of that 60 grand Islamic financing that Revenue have.”

He continues: “Or maybe it’s because of the Halal mortgages that are allowed in this country they don’t pay tax on.”

The rest of the video concerns migrants driving cars, and local businessmen Casey disapproves of.

Casey’s video on Instagram has received more than 3,566 likes, while the version on Facebook has garnered more than 1,700 reactions.

Anthony Casey is a far-right activist who had run in the 2024 General Election for the Irish Freedom Party, though has since left the party and co-founded a self-styled ‘community watch’ group Sinne na Daoine.

At the time of writing Casey has not responded to requests for comment or clarification. It is therefore unclear from the video what the “60 grand Islamic financing that Revenue have” is a reference to.

In response to a query about the “60 grand” claim, Revenue told The Journal the agency was unaware what this could refer to. 

When Casey says this phrase in the video, a screenshot appears showing a webpage on the Revenue website.

Although that page is about Islamic financing, it makes no reference to €60,000, but rather specifies what the term means and links to the proper forms that should be submitted to Revenue for “specified financial transactions”, such as Islamic financing.

It also includes a link to a manual clarifying how Islamic financial transactions are taxed. 

Again, no mention is made in this manual to a €60,000 figure.

However, the claim that there are “Halal mortgages” that people “don’t pay tax on” is far more straightforward to debunk.

The concept of Islamic financing refers to alternative loan arrangements that seek to avoid religious prohibitions on “usury” — the payment of interest on loans — which many Muslims see as being forbidden by the Koran.

Mortgages under Islamic financing (so-called “halal mortgages“) often take the form of arrangements called Murabaha or, more often, Diminishing Musharaka.

Under this latter arrangement, both the lender and the customer jointly own the property, with the customer leasing the lender’s part so that they can live in it.

That customer pays the bank for the lease — a bit like a renter — but also additional money to gradually buy a greater share in the property, until they own it entirely.

In a typical mortgage, the customer owns the house, but generally has a large loan to pay back with interest.

However, in the Diminishing Musharaka arrangement both the customer and the bank are joint owners, and generally a new deed will have to be drawn up when the customer fully buys the house from the bank.

It can also mean that any jumps or drops in price affect both the customer and the bank, reducing the potential gains and risk of the customer.

But it regularly remarked, including by Islamic scholars, that a Diminishing Musharaka is effectively the same as a regular mortgage, though with some extra technicalities to avoid the concept of interest. 

There have also been criticisms that customers of Islamic financing are in effect obliged to jump through more hoops and ultimately asked pay more than if they had taken out a standard home loan.

Are these types of transactions taxed? As mentioned above, there was a link to a manual on how Islamic financial transactions are taxed on the Revenue webpage that Casey showed in his video.

This notes that while the additional money paid by the customer in Diminishing Musharaka is not technically “interest”, for the purposes of tax it is treated the same.

“All of the provisions in the Tax Acts that apply to interest,” the guide says also apply to the excess money paid for so-called halal mortgages.

That guide goes on to outline how VAT, Capital Gains Tax, and Stamp Duty apply to Islamic banking.

“The tax treatment is intended to be comparable,” a spokesperson for Revenue told The Journal.

“The legislation aims to provide a level playing field for tax between certain type of economically equivalent financing arrangements rather than to confer a tax advantage.

“Stamp duty applies under the normal rules on the documentation executed in connection with credit transactions. There is a VAT exemption for specified financial transactions where those transactions correspond to conventional financial services which qualify for an exemption from VAT,” Revenue said.

False claims about non-white, or non-Irish people being entitled to benefits that Irish people are not are common in anti-immigration circles.

These often include false comparisons about what immigrant families or workers receive compared to Irish citizens, or claims that there are Irish laws that Ukrainians do not need to heed. 

One claim falsely said that a scheme designed to support Irish businesses affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was exclusively available to Ukrainians.

The Journal has also recently debunked claims that there are purposely built social housing for African migrants.

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