The Residential Zoned Land Tax will go ahead from early next year following a compromise reached between the three Government parties, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman has said.
Earlier this month, Minister for Finance Jack Chambers announced that a tax on hoarded land would be deferred for a year over fears it would be punitive to working farmers whose land was zoned as residential even though they had no intention of selling, or developing, their holdings.
However, the proposal to defer the tax was opposed strongly by the Green Party.
On Monday, Mr O’Gorman, the Green Party leader, said it was his view the tax would go ahead in early 2025 as planned and would not be deferred. He said the three Coalition parties had agreed in recent days that the wording would include a clear mechanism that would exclude working farms from the scope of the tax. The issues is now being considered by Mr Chambers in the contest of the Budget.
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Mr O’Gorman said the three parties had agreed that where farmers are farming land at the moment and intend to continue to do so into the future, this tax would be designed not to affect them.
“That was never the plan. We need a clear carve-out. We need a clear mechanism so they’re excluded from the application of that tax.”
Mr O’Gorman said he had spoken to Mr Chambers during the weekend on the matter. He said that the Department of Finance and Office of the Attorney General were working on a solution.
“We want to ensure that at the budget, we see a tax on land hoarding implemented, and ensure that where people have land that’s zoned, that’s serviced, that they are either building it themselves or allow somebody else to build it because the scale of the housing crisis is too great for us to allow the land to stay idle.”
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He continued: “Now they will either start to pay 3 per cent [of the value] which is quite a significant tax, or else build it.”
He said the Green Party was disappointed to see that tax deferred last year. “We think it’s really important that it is implemented,” he said.
Mr O’Gorman was speaking at the launch of the autism action plan in Government Buildings. Taoiseach Simon Harris, who also attended the event, said there was not a “clear landing zone” concerning the residential zone land tax.
“It’s important to remember that all three parties in the Cabinet collectively decided that this was a good measure. It is in the Housing for All strategies. I very much welcome the fact that also there’s clarity across all parties and across the Government that this tax was never about active farmers; and I’ve been very clear with farmers … and with the IFA that this is not about targeting active farmers.
“I do want to see the land hoarding tax progress with active farmers excluded because it is important that we move forward in relation to this.”
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