Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 March 2013
11. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Finance the cost of website from the Revenue Commissioners designed to give indicative values for properties subject to the property tax; and his views on whether it is fit for purpose compared to others. [14066/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Local Property Tax (LPT) is a self-assessed tax. This means that the property owner must decide the market value of his or her own property and make a return to Revenue. In the absence of a national residential property valuation system, the valuation guidance developed by Revenue is designed to help property owners in self-assessing the market value of their property by giving them average, indicative values for their area. The Revenue guidance is based on a detailed analysis of all property sales in the State since January 2010. The guidance provides a benchmark to help people consider whether their particular property is more or less valuable than the average in an area. This guidance will be helpful in the majority of cases but there are always properties in an area that differ from the average.
The valuation guidance explicitly states that: “This service provides a guide to average market values of properties in a given locality and offers an indicative valuation band for properties depending on type, age and location. It does not provide market values for individual properties.”
This guidance should not be used in isolation but together with other sources of information and the property owner’s knowledge of their neighbourhood and their own property. In this regard, I welcome that there is a range of guidance now available to property owners to help them self-assess.
Revenue has made the guidance as simple as possible – users need only know their property’s type, age and location. The Revenue valuation guidance website combines two aspects – a simple point and click option to get an average valuation for an area (electoral district), combined with a ‘heat map’ showing relative valuations across electoral districts.
The valuation guidance website is a successful collaborative project between Revenue and Ordnance Survey Ireland, the national mapping authority. The site was developed by Revenue at a cost of €48,250 including VAT. This includes the development cost, external advice on the choice of system and an estimate of the project management and quality assurance time. For completeness, this does not include the staff time and costs attributable to the Local Property Tax project overall which could not easily be disaggregated and would have been incurred even if the valuation guidance website had not been developed.
The Revenue guidance follows similar methods to those used by tax administrations in other countries and meets internationally accepted standards for this type of work. In addition, it compares favourably to research in Ireland, including work by researchers in the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Other valuation guidance and models in Ireland, for example those produced by some property or real estate listings websites, also use similar methods to providing average valuations.
I am completely satisfied that the Revenue valuation guidance is fit for purpose and performs at least equally well, if not better, than other sources of valuation information that are available. I am confident that the Revenue valuation guidance will be useful for the majority of property owners in assisting them to value their homes. Furthermore, the use of the online mapping application, to provide the guidance, is an excellent example of the public sector using GIS (Geographic Information System) technology in a new and innovative manner.
Finally I would point out that all Revenue is asking – and all I am asking, as Minister – is for property owners to take a reasonable view of the value of their own property, and to be honest. The level of public debate this week on property valuation suggests that most people are engaging with the Local Property Tax, have a good general sense of the value of their property, are carrying out research to enable them to do their self-assessed return, and I welcome that.
