Don’t forget Enda told us water charges aren’t tax

Michael Mernagh wrote to suggest that combining the collection of Local Property Tax and water charges would be efficient and — in his view — might evaporate the protests.

This ‘solution’ ignores the fact that the extra water charge is deliberately ‘not a tax’ (honestly Mr Eurostat, Enda W Mitty said so) and therefore nowhere near the remit of Revenue, and it also ignores the fact that Fine Gael have already given Irish Water the total proceeds from the Local Property Tax for last year, before any ‘bill’ was paid, and despite the fact that we were told that 80% of that was for local services.

Revenue are supposed to condemn fraud, not passively assist in facilitating it.