Revenue reveals €482m in Local Property Tax collected last year; 97% of households complied with the tax

Revenue has revealed it collected €482m in Local Property Tax last year, with the vast majority of households complying with the charge.

Figures released from Revenue show that 97% of households complied with the tax, in line with previous year, but that 797 cases were referred to the Sheriff/ External Solicitors for collection, while more than 12,800 tax clearance requests were refused due to a failure to pay the property tax.

Of these, almost 97% were later granted clearance after what Revenue described as “mutually acceptable payment solutions”.

The statistics released by Revenue show that:

• Households in Carlow had the highest compliance rate (99.6%), followed by Fingal (99.4%), Clare (98.8%), Galway City (98/7%), and South Dublin (98.4%).
• Donegal recorded the lowest compliance rate (93.3%), while Dublin City (94.4%), Leitrim (95.5%), Louth (95.6%), and Longford (95.8%) were the next local authority areas with the lowest rates.
• Revenue collected the most in Local Property Tax from Dublin City (€69.1m), Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown (€44.3M), Cork County (€39.9m), Fingal (€32.4m), and South Dublin (€25.5m).
• The counties from which the lowest amounts were collected were Leitrim (€2.2m), Longford (€2.3m), Monaghan (€3.8), Carlow (€3.8), and Roscommon (€3.9m).
• More than half of properties nationally were valued at under €150,000 (55%), while 0.2% were valued in excess of €1m the other end of the valuation band.
• Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown had the highest proportion of properties valued at more than €300,000 (59.2% of properties in the local authority area), compared to Leitrim and Longford, where the proportion of homes at that value made up 0.2% of all properties in each county.

Of the €482m collected last year, €2m came from the recovery of arrears from the Household Charge, which was brought in as a precursor to the Local Property Tax.

Revenue imposed 6,690 Income Tax and Corporation Tax surcharges on foot of non-compliance with the Local Property Tax.

It said that roughly seven in 10 of these cases were mitigated after requested reviews, and following discussions between Revenue and the relevant property owners.

Almost 88,000 property owners had their 2018 Local Property Tax deducted from their salaries or pensions, of which more than 42,500 ‘rolled over’ from similar arrangements in 2017.

Over 13,280 valuations have been increased arising from a combination of self-correction and Revenue challenges with 786 valuations increased during 2018.

Roughly 49,000 claims for an exemption from the Local Property Tax were received by Revenue in 2018.

Nearly one in four of these requests (24.1%) was on the basis that the property was bought in 2013 - for which an exemption was established by Government.

Other requests for exemption were due to the house being owned by a charity or public body for special needs (15.9%), long term-illness (15.6%), or for properties that are unsold by the builder or developer (13.6%).

Exemption requests were also made for pyrite damaged homes (2.9%), and for houses in unfinished estates (6.8%).

Of the 58,000 requests to defer payment of the tax, the vast majority (96.7%) were because the household was below the income threshold to pay the charge.

The LPT is due on Thursday, January 10.