Two Certainties in Life?

They say there are only two certainties in life; death and taxes. Well the latter is certainly an issue rising to the fore of public debate here in Ireland right now. The financial troubles the country faces are well documented and the latest in a string of deductions, levies, charges and taxes imposed on the population’s personal wealth or lack of it has caused national outcry, debate and now civil disobedience.

Central government has required all homeowners to register online and pay a €100 Household Charge with a view to introducing a Property Tax further down the line based on more traditionally value based criteria. All funds raised are claimed to be channelled to local authorities to help pay for local services, frequently quoted as being things such as road repairs and libraries. Currently road repairs consist of a man wearing a high visibility vest brandishing a bucket of tar, a spade and a sizeable enough midriff to flatten the heap of sticky gravel he piles into the pot hole and then jumps up and down on. This then leaves a nice mound in the road instead of a hole and is perhaps moderately less threatening to your poor car. Asking people to pay extra for this kind of expertise previously funded from the central tax fund would surely have them leaping to their computers to sign up?

Well it seems not. It turns out people are reluctant to voluntarily sign up for the household charge and pay online without any invoice being issued or big nasty men knocking on the door and demanding payment. Surely they saw this dissent coming? This is after all a country in which a good proportion of the population play an annual game of chicken by not paying their road tax for as many months as they can after the renewal date. The fact that the tax disc is backdated is not the point, it’s the sport of it that people like, the excuses they make at check points, the adrenalin of evading the lawman like a modern day Smokey & The Bandit where the Smokey docilely checks your road tax armed with a raised eyebrow instead of hurtling after you in a high speed chase and jumping over rivers where the bridge is down like in the film. The real stars of this game actually take on the authorities further by bluffing their way into convincing a disinterested and jaded copper in the station that their car has been off the road for the previous four months and can they have a disc from the current date please?

A war over our hearts and minds has been raging in the media over the rates of registration as the deadline for payment approached and eventually passed on the 31st of March. Government claims that people are registering in vast numbers and that they will be chasing and fining non-compliant homeowners have been met with counter claims by the numerous protest groups springing up. Describing government figures of high sign up rates as scare tactics they are trying to keep the public convinced of their safety in numbers.

“If there’s going to be at least 800,000 households who refuse to pay – and we think that will be the very least – it makes the tax null and void,” claims Cork Against the Household Tax treasurer Alan Gibson.

The fact that the fines for non-payment are relatively low, €10 for the first six months, €20 for the next six months and €30 if payment is over 12 months late, mean that people can afford to operate a wait and see policy as to whether the resistance holds.

Two certainties in life? Well we shall see.