asked the Minister for Finance whether he considers that the yield of the residential property tax has justified its introduction; and whether he has any proposals to abandon or reform it.
Ceisteanna — Questions Oral Answers - Residential Property Tax.
16.
The yield to date from this has been disappointing. It is too early, however, to evaluate the tax and I have no proposals to abandon or reform it.
I do not know the answer to this question, so it is a genuine supplementary and not merely an argumentative one. Could the Minister tell us how many more thousands of pounds have come in since 31 October by which date the tax had grossed £960,000?
The latest figure I have relates to 10 November at which stage £1,003,000 had been collected.
Would the Minister agree that that sum, even gross and not deducting the colossal cost of administering the tax, is not sufficient to pay the bill for the referendum we had two months ago? Does he also agree that it is a fair comment on the Labour Party's brainchild that we have this needless tax, barely sufficient to pay for an unwanted referendum, giving maximum exasperation all round in the process?
The comparison the Deputy wishes to make is not necessarily very meaningful. There are a number of other taxes which produce less than the cost of holding a referendum.
Would the Minister at least agree — I will not rub the Labour Party's nose in the fact that it does not come even anywhere near the £10 million they were expecting to collect — that when a system of taxation is both irrational and profitless to the State it is high time to reform it, perhaps by generalising it into a total property tax——
That is an argument now, Deputy.
As the gross yield is now apparently just over £1 million, the net will be, at best, half of that. Can the Minister explain how this is so much less than the figure which he included in his budget estimate as being the yield from this tax, which — I am sure he will recall — was £10 million and which, of course, was only a fraction of what other members of the Government told us it would be. How does the Minister reconcile the figures he is now giving us with the estimate provision he had in his budget for £10 million for this tax? If he cannot reconcile it, how is he going to bridge the gap that will arise on the budget deficit as a consequence of his miscalculation?
The Deputy knows perfectly well, and it is part of his problem, that when it comes to bridging gaps I have no difficulties. We will end up this year getting very close to the kind of targets we set out and that is a far better performance than the Deputy or his party ever managed to achieve. As far as the tax itself is concerned, obviously the introduction of a new tax is very difficult and any forecast as to the revenue it will produce must, of necessity, be conjectural to some extent. That is the case in relation to this tax which has one distinction in that it is the only tax in our code which is based on self-assessment. Therefore, I am not surprised that the results of the first year of its application should turn out to be somewhat different than expected.
Is the Minister saying that he is prepared to operate this tax on the basis of conjecture? Is that the basis on which budget estimates are going to be based from now on?
The Deputy is not going to get me that way. I made the point that the introduction of a new tax must, of necessity, be accompanied by a certain amount of conjecture as to its yield. There is no inconsistency in that.
The Minister can buy a few Mars bars.
A Cadbury's Snack might do the Deputy some good. I repeat that closing the gap is not a problem.
Would the Minister accept, in describing this tax and bearing in mind the use of the English language, that it would be better and more correct to describe it as a family and home tax rather than a residential property tax because there is quite an amount of residential property which does not come under the tax?
I am not going to engage in semantics with Deputy Tunney who was not here earlier on when Deputy O'Kennedy had a little indigestion about alleged semantics on my part.
The remaining questions will appear on next Tuesday's Order Paper.