MOST CO WEXFORD PROPERTIES IN TWO LOWEST TAX BANDS
MOST properties in County Wexford are in the two lowest Revenue bands when it comes to valuations for Local Property Tax.
Figures just published by Revenue, detailing LPT Exchequer national receipts of €477 million in 2017, reveal that 34.3 per cent of properties in the Model County are in the lowest band of €0-€150,000, while a slightly higher 34.9 per cent are in the next band, €150,001 to €200,000.
Just 1.5 one percent are in the €300,000-plus category.
In County Wexford, 64,800 properties submitted LPT returns, a compliance rate of 98.8 per cent, representing €12.5 million, almost two per cent higher than the national figure.
Collector- General Michael Gladney said in a statement that there is a continuing high compliance rate for LPT, currently 97 per cent, and the vast majority of property owners fully comply with their payment obligations either in a single payment, or with phased payments.
In a timely reminder to property owners, Mr Gladney said for those who have not already paid, or made arrangements to pay their 2018 LPT liabilities, tomorrow ( Wednesday, January 10) is the LPT payment deadline to pay in full by debit or credit card or cheque.
Mr Gladney said property owners who want to pay in full by Annual Debit Authority (an electronic cheque), and have their payment deducted March 21, 2018, must confirm this with Revenue by tomorrow.
For those not arranging payments, mandatory deduction at source, has been applied to 80,000 houses nationwide for
LPT in 2017, although Revenue said the figures fluctuate as property owners regularise their affairs.
In County Wexford, 3.3 per cent of households were affected in this way.
Exemptions accounted for €300,00O, the amount declared totalled €13.2 million, with €400,000 deferred.
In County Wexford, deferrals acoounted for 2,400 properties, or 3.9 per cent, while there were 1,500 exemptions, equivalent to 3.2 per cent.
Nationally, based on current information, there are 48,000 claims for exemption or deferral, the majority - 24.6 per cent of 11,800, for property purchased as a home in 2013.
The second highest category, for long-term illness, accounted for 7,400 applications, 15.5 per cent of the total.
Properties unsold by builders or developers accounted for 14 per cent or 6,700 houses, while applications by charities or public bodies owned for special needs represented 15.3 per cent, or 7,300 properties.
In Wexford, 34.3 per cent of properties are in the 0-€100,000 valuation band; 34.9 per cent are in the €100,001 to €150,000 band and 23 per cent are in the €150,001 to €200,000 band. Just 4.4 per cent are in the €200,001 to €250,000 band, 1.6 per cent are in the €250,001 to €300,000 band and 1.5 per cent are in the €300,000 plus categoRY.
Nationally, 27 per cent are in 0-€100,000 band; 27.8 per cent in the €100,001-€150,000 and 21.1 per cent in the €150,001 to €200,000. Only 0.2 per cent of properties are in the €1m plus band.
Around 43 per cent of properly owners self assessed the same LPT valuation band as Revenue estimate and 57 per cent assessed a different valuation band to the Revenue estimate, 41 per cent of them lower than Revenue.
In Wexford two per cent were three or more bands lower, 8.7 per cent were two bands lower and 31.1 per cent were one band lower. There was no change in the majority - 43.6 per cent, while 9.6 per cent were one band higher, 4.2 per cent were two bands higher and 2.5 per cent were three or more bands higher. Self-correction of valuations cane be done through the LPT online valuation on the Revenue website by revising the original valuation band/valuation declared in the 2013 LPT return on May 1, 2013. Since returns were filed, there have been more than 12,500 properties where the owner has opted to self-correct upwards their valuation band or following Revenue challenges. There are some 176,000 inviduals and other entities that are designated liable persons for two or more properties, which accounts for around 551,000 properties. HOW we all adore a love story. Whether it be the seed, the start, the spark at its beginnings, the trials and labours that challenge its survival or the hearts that swell gladly or break badly. We watch them, we read them, we witness them, bloom within them, survive them or, sadly, sometimes, we do not.
We long for the fairytale finish, and hang on the words or images that build them. And who doesn’t love it when the Prince and Princess live ‘happily-ever-after’? The world is a glorious place and all thing are possible. The optimism and bliss or seedling love has blossomed and survived!
But many of the most wonderful love stories ever told or written, do not have the joyous ending. The hearts we wish to see joined, remain apart, or perhaps torn apart. We twist and contort with the tortured souls and almost never give up hope until the last scene or when closing the final chapter.
Even now, when I watch that classic, ‘Casablanca’, for the umpteenth time, I still think Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) have a chance, they adore each other, there must be a way? Likewise in ‘Gone With The Wind’ can the magnetism between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara not supersede their enormous passion-thwarting stubbornness? Or the most famous love story perhaps ever written, when the notorious offspring of the Capulets and Montagues see their brief but spellbinding love, perish like a brief, bright star, burnt out before it ever really had a chance to flourish.
But whether screenplay, story or theatre, fiction or non, never were the depths and pains of doomed love better captured than when done so by a 27-year-old English woman, writing her first and only novel, in remote West Yorkshire in
1835. Wuthering Heights, quite simply, is a classic. Emily Jane Bronte, how did you do it? How did you grip us, the readers, so tightly and ensnare us in this most fantastic tale of tortured, vengeful, spiteful behavior and yet yearn for and despair over unfulfilled love?
This is a story of demonic, wild, intensity. Catherine and Heathcliff are that story. 19th Century censored sexual undercurrent at its finest. The plot, for the purposes of this article, is not important. What is important, is that a tale was woven so incredibly well, that even when we give up on the hope of their bodies and hearts being joined ever in this world, we, the readers, still cling to the faint chance that their souls, in death, will find each other in the next.
These long dark winter’s evenings, make some time for yourself, light the fire, and read it. Not such a bad New year’s resolution, perhaps? ‘THE entire World is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her. I could no sooner forget her as I could my own existence’ – Heathcliff.