The Green Party is at loggerheads with its Coalition partners over plans to defer the residential zoned land tax to prevent farmers being penalised.
The tax was due to kick in next year, with landowners facing an annual 3 per cent payment on the market value of land that is earmarked for housing and also serviced by infrastructure that would allow residential development. Taoiseach Simon Harris confirmed on Tuesday that these plans may now be deferred to avoid active farmers being “wrongly taxed.”
Chair of the Oireachtas Housing Committee and Green Party TD Steven Matthews described the plans to defer the tax as “incredible” and “like hiding food in a famine”.
“It is incredible that Fianna Fáil, for the second year in a row, are looking not to implement this tax. They have had plenty of time to iron out any difficulties. Do they not realise that there is a housing emergency? That there are people crying out for homes and that we have to increase our housing output of affordable, social, private and cost rental homes. It is incumbent on the Minister for Housing and Minister for Finance to use every possible option to alleviate the housing crisis affecting our people.
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“The zoned land tax is not a silver bullet, but abandoning it is cash in hand for landowning speculators. Hoarding land and depriving society of the urgent and basic need of an adequate number of houses is like hiding food in a famine. It is unacceptable and Fianna Fáil need to rethink this failure to act.”
[ Farmers should not be ‘penalised’ by residential zoned land tax, Taoiseach saysOpens in new window ]
A Green Party source said the Government agreed to the measure to ensure that speculators don’t sit on land that has been earmarked for new homes to watch its value go up.
“It’s already been delayed by a year and now Fianna Fáil want to long-finger it beyond the election, which means it may never happen. Everyone in Government agrees that we need in the region of 50,000 new homes every year but that’s going to be impossible if we allow speculators to sit on parcels of land that have been specifically zoned and serviced with infrastructure such as roads, electricity wires and water supplies.
“There is already a facility whereby farmers who genuinely don’t want to sell or build on their land can avoid the tax and forego the increase in the value of their land that typically comes with zoning by asking for their land to be dezoned.”
Earlier on Tuesday Mr Harris said: “I do not want to see, and will not stand over, a situation where an active farmer wrongly gets taxed.”
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