Sir, – I manage to pay my TV licence with no invoice. I rarely get a reminder for my motor tax, never mind an invoice.
Sky? No invoice. The list goes on. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to know whether you own a house and are due to pay a standard charge.
The Government found my house to send me a free candle, free tablets in case of world war three and, if I remember right, a note about a free tree planting.
When I lived in Dublin, Leo Varadkar, in particular, found my house on a regular basis to send me State-sponsored junk mail.
I can’t help thinking if we could collect all the hot air around this (inequitable) tax we could generate a lot of green electricity. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I believe that the Government could improve understanding and acceptance of the household charge, if it were to clarify what type of charge is being introduced, and planned for the future.
If the household charge is a services charge to pay for local services such as street lighting, cleaning, parks and libraries, then it should be paid by those using the services, whether they are owner-occupiers or tenants.
If the charge is a precursor to the introduction of a central property tax, then it should be paid by the owner of the property.
In France and many other EU countries there are payments for both local services and an annual property tax. Both are based on location and property value.
The occupier of the property at the beginning of the year pays the “taxe d’habitation” and the property owner pays the “taxes foncières” annually. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – So Phil Hogan wants to thank the “patriotic” people who paid their household charge on time. Is he therefore saying that those who didn’t are unpatriotic? It is just further evidence of Mr Hogan’s tactics of intimidating people into paying the household charge following on from his veiled threats of having council workers double up as door to door tax collectors.
His latest statement to give more money to regions that contributed most to the household charge is another example of his desperation.
I voted Fine Gael for the first time in the last election and I acknowledge the many difficulties it faces. However, I cannot help but feel let down at the bullyboy tactics adopted by Mr Hogan in his desperate and shameful attempt to get people to pay this tax. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Enda Kenny promised that he would hold his ministers accountable and those not performing would be dismissed.
It’s patently obvious that Phil Hogan’s performance regarding the household charge and his threats around it, are a complete failure, so why doesn’t Enda Kenny sack him, or is it just one more U-turn for Fine Gael? It’s clear that most people find the new tax unacceptable.
The obvious way to approach it would have been to decrease the tax-free band and provide for a property tax credit for those exempt. This would have cost nothing to implement and would have avoided the adverse reaction to yet another new tax.
Surely Fine Gael must realise that it was an inflexible approach to a tax issue which brought down their coalition Government in 1982 and it could do it again? – Yours, etc,