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Property Tax
Revenue taking money from people who have undervalued their homes
The number of individuals who have mandatory reductions on pensions or wages has doubled since 2013.
EFFORTS ARE BEING made by the Revenue Commissioners to ensure that individuals have valued their homes correctly for property tax.
This follows Local Property Tax (LPT) being “mainstreamed” into normal tax collections the Revenue has said.
The State agency is now, ”focussing on compliance activity and on ensuring that all property owners pay the correct amount of LPT.”
The most recent figures on LPT, released in July, show that the government has been gradually stepping up its efforts to recuperate what it is owed. In 2013, 31,000 mandatory reductions were made to pensions or wages for unpaid LPT.
This had increased to 50,500 last year, and so far to the start of July in 2015, 62,900 mandatory reductions have been made.
Revenue has what it describes as a “sophisticated data analysis reporting tool” that allows it to look for ‘outliers’ – properties that have values that are out of sync with similar houses close to it.
Doing this the LPT average for a certain area can be determined, making it clear if an individual property is paying less.
Since the introduction of the tax there have been more than 8,200 cases where the owners have opted for self-correcting the value of their properties upwards.
Home owners have their rate of their LPT set after self-assessing the value of their own dwelling. The current date for property values that LPT was set on was 1 May 2013. Rates will be revised against house prices at the end of October next year.
Revenue may investigate the rate LPT is paid at on a house depending on what its selling price is.
If the value of a property has gone up by more than 25% in Dublin or more than 15% nationally since May 2013 then the individual selling the home is required to provide evidence that the original valuation they submitted was correct.
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