Letters

‘Big increase in renters aged over 65’

Housing crisis

Sat Jul 29 2023 - 00:09

Sir, – Your lead story “Census shows big increase in renters aged over 65″ (News, July 28th) has something for everyone in the audience.

Opposition parties see the 83 per cent increase to almost 17,000 between 2016 and 2022 as “a damning indictment” of the Government’s housing policy. The Department of Housing points out that the 375,000 over-65s shown by the most recent census to own their homes outright “was the highest number ever”.

I can think of a number of contributors other than the failure of Government policy to the increase over six years of about 8,000 in the number of over-65s living in rented accommodation. I know of people who have sold their homes to realise their equity but on terms that they will rent their homes for their lifetimes.

Others have sold and rented as a hedge against a Sinn Féin-led government abolishing or restricting the tax exemption on the sale of the principal private residence.

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But I suspect the biggest factor is the fact that renters aged 59-64 in 2016 were, like the rest of us, six years older in 2022 while continuing to rent. – Yours, etc,

PAT O’BRIEN,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Labour leader Ivana Bacik’s comments regarding the recent ESRI report on the disparity in home ownership figures between old and young misses the point.

While she is right in blaming the Government for its failure to address the housing crisis, she is ignoring one glaring reason why the over-40-year-old “have-lots” (as she puts it) cannot share the wealth with the younger “have-nots”: capital acquisitions tax.

The tax system actively discriminates against parents and grandparents who wish to pass on their family homes to the younger generations.

Until 2017, it was possible to pass on a house to a family member without also “gifting” them a tax burden, if the house happened to be their home. But in 2017 the universal “dwelling house exemption” was abolished except for farmers, business people (who can, for example, declare the family home a business premises) and the severely disabled.

With the price of even a modest house in South Dublin inflated to well above the “lifetime tax-free threshold” (¤335,000), the only way a Southside Dubliner can receive the family home from their parents, without paying punitive tax, is for the old folks to die (or indeed for their children to be struck down with some terrible illness).

It is most disturbing that vulnerable old people are incentivised to think about dying in order to save their children a punitive tax bill.

And the fact that our tax laws are set up to ensure that only the very rich can afford to receive a gift from a living parent should be of great concern to a socialist such as Ms Bacik.

I have raised this matter with various public representatives from economically centrist parties in the belief that they might have the interests of the “squeezed middle” and Dubliners in particular at heart. The response I got from one TD is sobering.

Pointing out that Ireland is not unique in having such punitive tax laws, and that the purpose of “gift tax” is “in order to ensure that transfers of wealth within families and between generations are appropriately taxed”, the (wealthy) TD added that such “gifts” are regarded as “unearned wealth” for the recipient, “and therefore like all other forms of income or capital should be subject to an appropriate level of tax as part of the process of ensuring as fair a society as possible”.

Regarding the decision to abolish the dwelling-house exemption for the healthy children of living parents, the TD said this exemption, which was initially only intended to protect bereaved heirs from the trauma of having to sell their family home shortly after the death of their loved one, moved “more into the realm of gifting which caused an unintended consequence in that it was costing the exchequer a significant amount of revenue”.

I asked the TD to advocate for the reversal of this decision on the grounds that it discriminates against ordinary working-class Dubliners (due to the inflation of house prices and the fact that Dubliners cannot avail of the farmhouse exemption).

The TD replied they would not have the support of their colleagues “in even suggesting it in advance of Budget 2024″.

While this might, on the surface, look like a first-world problem (and I appreciate the distressing fact that some people will never be home-owners), it would make sense to reinstate the dwelling-house exemption if only to save the “squeezed middle” from sliding into poverty, adding to the Housing Assistance Payment queue – and costing the exchequer even more. – Yours, etc,

GERALDINE COMISKEY,

Shankill,

Co Dublin.