3,500 say their home is worth €1m-plus

Just over 3,500 people have valued their homes at more than €1m, with 24% saying their home is worth less than €100,000.

According to the Comptroller & Auditor General report, 418,880 people (23.8%) valued their house at €0-€100,000, while 506,880 people, or 28.8%, valued their properties at between €100,000 and €150,000, and 399,520 (22.7%) of owners valued theirs at €150,00 to €200,000.

However, 3,520 owners or 0.2% of people stated their properties were valued at €1m or more.

The report also highlighted how this year, some €95m was still outstanding in payments for the household charge, the levy for homeowners introduced in 2012 before the property tax itself.

By June, Revenue had issued 426,000 household charge arrears letters in respect of the 474,000 or so identified properties for this.

The figures also show that thousands of employers have failed to deduct property tax as agreed from people’s incomes.

The annual C&AG report sheds light for the first time on those who failed the pay the tax, how it was collected, and problems that remain to be fixed in collecting it.

Overall, the C&AG praises the work of Revenue in collecting the property tax and notes that the compliance rate was 97% in 2013.

It says Revenue sent its own estimates for specific properties to 1.5m homeowners.

Of these, about 1m ended up revaluing their property for the charge.

Roughly 240,000 of these subsequently revalued their homes upward.

The report shows that 3,546 employers were non- compliant in deducting the property tax at source.

The negligent employers have told collecting offices they overlooked the obligation to follow Revenue’s instructions and that in some cases, workers had left or were long-term sick.

The C&AG recommends that Revenue should consider using up-to-date technologies, including mapping tools, to better value homes. On-site reviews of properties in designated areas should also be looked at, it said. Revenue in part agreed.

However, it rejected suggestions that property owners should be asked to provide more detailed characteristics about their homes, including the number of rooms and local amenities in the area.

On exemptions, several problems were noted. Around 52,000 properties were given exemptions for last year.

A random check on exemptions for properties in ghost estates showed 40% of properties were not actually in incomplete developments. Revenue said it would address problems here.

Revenue pointed out that it sent 250,000 compliance letters this year to homeowners.

It carried out more than 40,000 mandatory deductions from people’s pay for the tax this year.

The C&AG also noted that tax clearance certificates for 10,000 self-employed people were not released by Revenue where owners had failed to pay up.