Household tax reminders and legal threats to be sent out
Up to 100,000 property owners are set to receive the legal threats by post after their addresses were identified from utility providers and state agency databases, the Department of Environment has confirmed.
The warnings are the first batch of letters to be issued in a bid to force the 600,000 of 1.6m properties in the State to pay up.
Letters from local authorities will begin to arrive in letterboxes this morning, with notices that the charge has now risen to €114 when interest and increases are included.
Owners of multiple properties will have each of their premises identified in council letters.
Property owners will receive three sets of letters to help the Government rake in the remainder of the estimated €160m from the charge.
The first is a reminder. The second is a further reminder but advises that legal action may be taken if the homeowner does not pay. The third will advise the owner that they have a certain period of time to pay and that legal action will commence if they fail to do so.
Property owners failing to pay could face fines of up to €5,000.
Environment Minister Phil Hogan had promised that people who failed to pay by the end of March deadline would be traced.
The Local Government Management Agency — the group collecting the levy — has trawled the databases of Revenue, the Department of Social Protection, the Private Residential Tenancies Board, and ESB Electric Ireland, among others, and cross-checked addresses against those who have paid already.
The remaining property owners will now receive the warning letters.
Jackie Maguire, chair of the household charge project board said: “The first batch of homeowners who have not yet paid the charge has been taken from a sample set following an initial data comparison between the household charge database and other databases as set out in the act.”
To date, 957,733 properties have been registered for the charge with a further 17,607 registered for waivers. Money continues to be paid in daily, according to the LGMA.
The numbers registered however, is still far short from the estimated 1.6m properties believed to be in the State.
