Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 30 April 2014
112. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance if he will list by county and local authority area the number of properties valued at over €1 million for the purpose of the local property tax. [19600/14]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, the Revenue Commissioners have incrementally published data in relation to Local Property Tax and the most recent data published by them shows that about 0.2% of residential properties nationally have been valued for Local Property Tax (LPT) purposes in excess of €1m on a self assessment basis, which equates to approximately 3,500 properties.
I am advised by the Commissioners that they will publish further data over time. One of the factors to be considered in preparing and publishing granular data relating to any tax, and this is relevant to the Deputy's question, is Revenue's obligations under section 851A Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 regarding the confidentiality of taxpayers' information. Publishing certain LPT data on a county or local authority basis presents a risk that the identity of individual property owners could be inferred. Revenue will consider in due course whether there are ways to mitigate this risk with a view, as they have done up to now, to putting as much information as possible into the public domain. In the meantime, I am informed that compliance data in relation to the LPT is available broken down by city and county councils nationally and the most up to date figures were published in April 2014 on the Commissioners website at: http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/lpt/lpt-stats-0414.pdf.
