Section 38 of the Finance (Local Property Tax Act) 2012 (as amended) provides that property owners who fail to meet their LPT obligations will be subject to a tax-geared surcharge when filing an Income Tax (IT), Corporation Tax (CT) or Capital Gains Tax (CGT) return.
The surcharge is set at 10% of the appropriate IT, CT, or CGT liability to a maximum of €63,485 and is in addition to the actual LPT liability plus any interest arising on foot of late payment. The surcharge is imposed from the date the IT, CT or CGT return is filed. Under certain conditions the surcharge can be reduced to the total amount of LPT outstanding. These conditions include situations where the surcharge amount is higher than the outstanding LPT liability, where the property owner files the LPT return or pays the outstanding liability either in full or on a phased basis.
Revenue has advised me that up to 55,000 surcharges have been raised since the commencement of LPT, but almost 70% of these were mitigated following remedial action by the property owners. The information requested by the Deputy is set out as follows:
The total values of surcharges ultimately applied (for all years) are:
IT - €5.7 million
CT - €410,000
The surcharge payments collected are classified as IT, CT or CGT as appropriate and are not included in the LPT receipts. The total values of surcharge payments received to date are:
IT: €4.4 million
CT: €294,000
A yearly breakdown on the total value of surcharges and the CGT surcharge value and payments data are not available at this time but will be provided to the Deputy as soon as possible.
The following Table sets out the number of cases for which surcharges have been raised. For the majority of ‘CGT Assessment’ cases, surcharges were also applied under IT or CT.
Year
|
No. of IT cases
|
No. of CT cases
|
No of CGT Assessments
|
|
|
|
|
2013
|
6,909
|
264
|
88
|
2014
|
9,371
|
328
|
107
|
2015
|
10,346
|
322
|
161
|
2016
|
8,390
|
343
|
181
|
2017
|
8,919
|
387
|
188
|
2018
|
6,238
|
164
|
202
|
2019 (To April)
|
1,820
|
62
|
72
|
Total
|
51,993
|
1,870
|
999
|