Tuesday, May 3, 2016

TAX REDUCTION TO FIX HOUSING CRISIS (OPINION)

Now that we are on the verge of having a government of sorts in Ireland, at last, I expect they might look at the housing crisis and put something together to facilitate construction.  It took a while for the penny to drop in government circles during the crash but the narrative went something like this: "The developers and their like ruined the country and so we hate greedy developers."
Construction then stopped and the dole queue grew.  Jobs were now needed and guess what: if 4 are on the dole 2 are men and one of which is construction related unemployed and the industry shrunk to a tenth of it's former size it  now dawns on us (government) that we must help construction.  CIF said drop the VAT to 9% but FG/Lab got cute and said no, but we'll set up the HRI and lasoo a few cowboys into the tax net while we give the poor houseowner a break and a much needed wee extension.
I suppose at this stage we needn't demand too much government interference, as this normally unbalances the market, but perhaps further tax relaxation would be good.  For starters reduce professional's VAT from the luxury 23% to the builders 13.5%. Also look at the full tax take on development and ease it so the ("nasty") developers get their profit.  If the truth be known there will be no movement without developers profits.  Comments welcome.