Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 9 June 2020
87. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Finance the amount of revenue generated from the land zoning windfall tax when previously in operation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10442/20]
View answerI assume the Deputy is referring to the 80% Windfall Tax which applied to certain disposals of land from 30 October 2009 to 31 December 2014.
As the Deputy is probably aware, the National Asset Management Agency Act 2009 amended the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 by providing for an 80% windfall tax on profits or gains arising from disposals of development land, to the extent that those gains were attributable to a relevant planning decision. Profits or gains from these activities that were not attributable to a relevant planning decision were taxed in the normal way. Section 31 of Finance Act 2014 repealed the 80% tax rate on these profits or gains with effect from 1 January 2015.
I am advised by Revenue that, based on information returned on Income Tax returns and Corporation Tax returns for the years 2010 to 2014, there is no record of any such profits or gains having been returned. However, it should be noted that the windfall gains provisions were introduced primarily to discourage overheating of the property market by way of speculative transactions involving rezoned land rather than as a revenue raising measure.
