People Before Profit Cllr Adrienne Wallace has slammed calls from the chief executive to increase the Local Property Tax by 15% in Carlow. Cllr. Wallace has called the LPT ‘a regressive tax’ and says the council have to stop penalizing ordinary people.
Cllr. Wallace said “An increase in the local property tax by Carlow councillors would be an endorsement of the politics that penalizes the people. It’s time to put an end to chasing the ordinary worker for every pence while leaving the corporations, big business and big government off the hook. I am opposed any increase and calling for a 15% reduction in the LPT. People Before Profit opposes regressive taxation and the economic rationale that is used to justify it. We should abolish this unfair and failed tax and increase investment in local and public services through progressive central taxation and in particular by taxing the profiteers and speculators who are making obscene profits from the current housing crisis and paying almost no tax.”
She added that “Before the introduction of the Local Property Tax, one of the main sources of funding to local authorities was the General Purpose Grant. However, after 2015, this was replaced with an allocation from the Local Property Tax. In 2008, the General Purpose Grant to local authorities amounted to €979 million. After the property tax was introduced, this funding shrank dramatically. In 2015, funding to local authorities from the Local Property Tax stood at €458 million. In 2016, it was €453 million and in 2017, it was €501 million. These figures show up the lie that was told about the property tax being used to better local public services. It has resulted in less funds being available to fund local services.”
Cllr Wallace concluded that “Local Government and public services need a major injection of funding from central government to bring it in line with other European countries; this funding must be based on progressive taxation. TD’s recently gave themselves a €4,000 pay rise – there is nothing stopping them from putting funding where it is needed – in local authorities. The LPT takes absolutely no consideration of income or personal wealth and we cannot continue as public representatives to tax low income families whilst simultaneously accepting less funding for the operations of our councils.”
