The Republic of Ireland Commission on Taxation Report 2009, which runs to over 500 pages, has this little bit about LVT, buried in the discussion on property taxation in general. In doing so, they have has walked away from the opportunity to give the country a competitive advantage - which it desperately needs in view of its location at the margins of Europe. Like the English Lyons Committee, they say that LVT would bring benefits and then condemn it as too difficult, putting up objections that are mostly nonsensical. The claim that people could not understand land valuations is ridiculous. It is an insult to the intelligence of the Irish public, since the concept of LVT could be set out in a clearly written and illustrated A4 leaflet in a way that most people could grasp in as long as it took to read it. Everyone knows that a house in a popular area is worth more than an identical house in an unpopular one and that the difference is due to location. If further explanation was needed it could be backed up by a one minute animated video.
The report also asserts that the tax would be perceived as unfair, which is strange considering that people are perfectly happy to pay different prices for different seats in a cinema even though they are seeing the same film. Nor does it refer to the feature of LVT which has obvious popular appeal - that people are not penalised for having a garage extension, conservatory or loft conversion, which should stop the kind of objection that applies to existing property taxes - that they are a tax on improvements - a point that the newspapers are quick to mention. The Commission is talking nonsense (our italics) because it simply does not want to do it. The arguments for LVT in the Irish Republic are essentially the same as those set out in a
submission the Campaign made in 2007 to a committee dealing with property taxation in Northern Ireland and a subsequent
rejoinder to its final report.
The section from the Republic of Ireland new report dealing with LVT is reproduced in full below.