Thousands receive household tax refund

Thousands of property owners have been refunded by the agency collecting the household charge after paying twice or having been accidentally overcharged.

More than 2,800 property owners have to date received refunds from the Local Government Management Agency.

The repayments came as the agency struggles to cope with more than 6,000 complaints from homeowners regarding excessive amounts deducted from bank accounts. This will lead to more refunds being paid to potentially thousands of property owners.

Agency chief executive Paul McSweeney confirmed the figures to the Irish Examiner. He said door-to-door calls from local authority officials demanding payments of the €100 charge from non-payers was still an option.

“We have 6,000 queries and some paid for the same property twice,” said Mr McSweeney. “We have to contact those people and go: ‘You’re due a refund.’ I had to sign a whole load of cheques saying you paid too much. That’s amounted to €28,000.”

Mr McSweeney said in some cases property owners paying online may have pressed the button twice in error, making two payments.

In other cases, however, both spouses or partners paid for the one property without the other knowing.

One property owner told the Irish Examiner he and his wife had paid the charge for their Ballycotton, Co Cork, home but authorities had demanded it be paid again.

Michael Connolly said the couple’s home had been registered for the charge with the agency on Mar 20, before the deadline, and that they had received a receipt for the payment shortly afterwards by email.

“I’m annoyed as we’ve already paid it,” Mr Connolly said. “Everybody we ring is blaming everybody else. We were asked to pay it a second time — and with interest. All this doubling of services is a waste of money, with the council demanding payment and the collection firm saying we paid already.”

Mr McSweeney said talks were held with local authorities about visiting the homes of non-payers and reminding them. He was aware of trade union opposition to this.

“How they decide to enforce it will be up to each local authority manager. If they decide that they need to go door to door, then they will need to get people going door to door. If the manager gives them a legal instruction, then they have to do it,” he said.

As of yesterday, 1,042,161 properties had registered for the charge. Up to 600,000 remain to be registered.