Double Home Taxation will be opposed - Gaughan

A spokesperson for the Loch Garman against the Household tax group as said that the government's planned property tax is a blatant form of double taxation. Dominick Gaughan said that Minister Phil Hogan had recently admitted to retaining stamp duty after the introduction of the new property tax next year, something that the Loch Garman group feels is a very overt case of forcing householders to pay double tax on their properties.

Mr Gaughan said;

"The government's plan to retain stamp duty after the introduction of the new property tax is an absolute insult to the intelligence of the Irish people. Do they really expect people to warmly welcome, or even concede to such a blatant form of double taxation?"

"We have heard Fine Gael and Labour reps mutter consistently about the need for fairness. In relation to a family who have paid stamp duty now having a property tax imposed on them where is the fairness? How can this form of double taxation be fair on any low to middle income earning household?"

"And as we predicted when we were opposing and calling for the Household charge to be abolished we now see that ordinary low to middle income households and families will be paying 3, 4, 5 and 6 times as much money as they were asked to pay last time round. The Government told us we would have a fairer property tax. How could paying 3,4, 5 and 6 times more be conceived as fairer?"

"It is impossible for hundreds of thousands of Irish families to pay this unfair tax with all the cuts and extra tax's being imposed on their households. People made very cleared when they boycotted the household charge this year, not because they were troublemakers, but because they were bled dry from unrelenting austerity. The government has clearly ignored the people. Is that fair?"

"No one with an iota of sense could accept that imposing stamp duty and a property tax on a household and then claiming that it is not double taxation is fair. It is not fair and it will certainly be met with mass opposition. We have seen an enormous resistance against the household tax and we will see an even greater form of defiance to this property tax from the people of Loch Garman."