Household tax refusals ‘tracked by registry’

Tens of thousands of property owners refusing to pay the household tax will be tracked through the Land Registry in the coming days.

Property owners identified through the Property Registration Authority, which oversees the Land Registry, will receive payment demands shortly.

The Local Government Management Agency got the names of non-payers from the authority, which has a database of 1.3m folios of land and properties.

The PRA said the shared data would allow the identification of the owner name and address, land registry folio number, folio property number, plan number, geo-locator, and date of registration in the land registry. The exchange of information had begun on Aug 1, it added.

As opposed to landlords and multiple property owners who were targeted in the last batch of letters, this round of warnings is expected to focus on owners of just one property.

Letters to owners who have not yet paid will be sent next week. The new wave of threats to prosecute non-payers comes as penalties and interests will bring the charge up to €127 after the weekend, a rise by €11.

Under legislation, penalties and interests have risen since the original €100 charge was introduced. Payments made in the month of October will incur the extra costs, the LGMA said.

As of yesterday, over €104m had been collected from over 1m households by the LGMA.

The agency recently sent three rounds of letters to more than 100,000 people, mainly landlords and multiple-property owners whose names were sourced through the Private Residential Tenancies Board.

The new round of letters would use the PRA database, the LGMA said.

Jackie Maguire, chair of the household charge project board, said: “The legislation allows us to access various agencies databases. This information is being used to contact those property owners who have not yet paid the charge to advise them that they are legally obliged to do so.”

The agency has yet to cross-check information with to databases of the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Social Protection, and ESB Networks, which it claims will help it identify the 600,000 who have yet to pay.

The Revenue will take over the collection of the charge next year, whereby it will become a tax.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has already said that demands by the troika that €1bn be collected in the tax are excessive and that the amount will be smaller.

Today’s columnist: Victoria White