Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 3 July 2019
113. Deputy Joan Burton asked the Minister for Finance the number of households exempted from property tax by county in tabular form; when he expects the households exempted to become liable; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28447/19]
View answerThe requested data, (the number of households exempted from property tax by county) as available at 31 December 2018 is set out in tabular form in Revenue's End of Year statistics report for the Local Property Tax, (available at www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/lpt/local-property-tax-2018.pdf) at page 8 of the document.
The various exemption types are generally open-ended. However, there are two that have a fixed statutory end date of 31 December 2019; i.e. certain properties purchased between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2013 and trading stock of builder/developer sold in the period 1 January 2013 to 31 October 2019. The number of exemptions claimed is 11,700 and 5,200, respectively. These exemptions have their statutory basis in sections 8 and 9 Finance, respectively, (Local Property Tax) Act 2012 (as amended). In line with my decision to defer the revaluation date to 1 November 2020, all exemptions will be further extended to this date and any necessary legislative provisions will be introduced in due course in an amending LPT Bill.
There is a distinction to be made between (i) exempted properties, which have been detailed above, and (ii) properties built since 2013 which are not liable for LPT. The figures above do not include properties completed after 1 May 2013. That category should be distinguished from those properties that were completed by 1 May 2013. The post 1 May 2013 completed properties do not have to be exempted from LPT as such, because they do not actually come within the ambit of LPT. As they did not exist on 1 May 2013, they will be outside the charge to LPT until the next valuation date of 1 November 2020. The owners of these properties are not required to submit LPT returns or valuations to Revenue, consequently their number is not known by Revenue and Revenue does not compile or publish statistics on these properties.
For the purposes of the LPT review, Revenue and the Dept. of Finance compiled estimates of the potential number of such properties from a combination of Revenue’s Stamp Duty files, CSO data and other information. There are an estimated 60,000-80,000 such properties, depending on the time period being examined.
