Irish Times "CGT exemption on family home at risk in the Budget"

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Early Riser said:
Yes, I think we have, at least in the psychological sense. Possibly it even has historical roots - the association of wealth and power with property. And apart from selling it is perceived as a way of building up an investment to hand on after death.
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Any actual evidence of that, though? We don't often see people trading in their homes for other assets, the pre-crash bubble period fashion notwithstanding.
 
Early Riser said:
Of the home been seen as an investment in the psychological sense ? No, maybe it exists - I haven't researched it. As a way of passing on wealth ? Opposition to inheritance taxes ?
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How often do we see someone quoting reserch to back up there argument only to see someone else quoting reserch to back up the opposite view ,
 

I definitely do disagree with your understanding. Changing an exemption within an existing tax is not "in effect a new tax", any more than changing tax credits or rates of tax is a new tax.

We definitely approach it from different perspectives though. Your view is that nothing should be taxed and all taxes should be justified. Tax is theft and all that. Which is fine. I don't necessarily disagree with that as a principle.

However, Capital Gains Tax exists, so my rationale starts from a point where the tax itself has already been justified insofar as necessary (since it exists and continues to do so). All assets are within the scope of CGT, unless specifically exempted or relieved. My question is, what is the principle which requires a PPR to continue to be viewed in a different category to other assets that aren't exempt or fully exempt from CGT.
 

I see where you are coming from, but if something is completely exempt from the tax, then bringing it into the net is effectively a new tax as far as I'm concerned. It's a qualitative difference rather than a quantitative difference. Going from 0 to 1, or 100 to 99, is different in kind to going from 33 to 34?

My question is, what is the principle which requires a PPR to continue to be viewed in a different category to other assets that aren't exempt or fully exempt from CGT.
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You have to have a house to live in. Housing is a basic human right.
If you do not have a house, the state steps in to provide you with accomodation.
Owning a house therefore removes the state from the burden of a responsibility \ obligation \ duty of care \ liability. This doesn't apply to other assets in the scope of CGT, or doesn't apply to the same extent?

(those are not rhetorical question marks, they indicate that what I said is a proposition...)
 

What about the case of a house that has been both a PPR and a let property during its period of ownership, which is currently only partially exempt from tax (based on proportionate periods of use as PPR or otherwise).

Under your analysis the loss of partial exemption constitutes a new tax. That doesn't really make sense.
 

Switching its use to a 'let' property represents a material change though. If I switch my car to commercial use temporarily I expect to be treated as a commercial entity for tax purposes, and lose any exemptions I have relating to domestic use - regardless of whether there is or is not taxation on domestic car use. Ditto for say my car insurance policy.
 

Ok. Again I'm not sure I'd agree, but it doesn't have to be let. You could find yourself in the fortunate position of it becoming a second/holiday home. It'd still be your residence, just not your PPR.
 
torblednam said:
Ok. Again I'm not sure I'd agree, but it doesn't have to be let. You could find yourself in the fortunate position of it becoming a second/holiday home. It'd still be your residence, just not your PPR.
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Maybe I'm wearing my IT hat when I say this but at the level of the mechanics of introducing this, it's fundamentally different going from 0 to 1 or 100 to 99 than from 33 to 34 because in terms of effect 0 and 100 don't exist yet ... Changing the rate of a tax, or the threshold at which it kicks in at is not a scope change.
Existing Revenue systems and processes remain unchanged in effect. No new page required on Revenue.ie or Citizens Information website, just update the existing.
Now we'd be talking about having CGT with possibly a different rate and different exemptions, one for residences and one for investment properties.
It's a scope change. Work would be needed on revenue systems and processes.
 
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The only aspect of the above which is actually correct re what you're calling a scope change, is if a standalone rate is brought in, which isn't the same as one of the historic rates already included on the form.

There's a section of legislation (s.604 TCA 97) which provides for the relief, and the reduction in relation to periods that the property isn't a PPR etc. This section would need a couple of subsections inserted to give effect to a cap on relief. Existing PPR relief guidance notes etc. get revised to reflect whatever change is brought in.

No change to Revenue systems would be required, and maybe you've never filled in a CGT return, because it's a self assessment tax and the critical bit for the taxpayer to enter is the amount of their chargeable gains. The forms change every year anyway, to cater for all the other "new taxes" that each budget spawns, so even if I'm misunderstanding what constitutes a scope change, it gets dealt with as part of business as usual for Revenue.
 
I suppose we're getting into very fine points, but let's think about a different kind of legislation. We already have a ban on smoking in workplaces. Presumably this is worded in such a way that smoking is a private residence is exempt from this ban?

Extending the ban to smoking in a private residence to me would not represent the removal of an exemption but would represent the introduction of an offence. The original legislation's scope and intention was clearly not to introduce an exemption for private residences, but to introduce the offence of smoking in the workplace only.
If the legislation allowed for the banning of smoking in workplaces with more than X employees, and then it was changed to govern all workplaces, I don't think that would be a scope change \ new offence.

I don't think I can word things more clearly than that, so on this aspect of it I think the case for the defence (or am I the prosecution?) rests. Over to you!
 
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I don't see why we should need to talk about a different kind of legislation, other than to build a straw man. The relevant legislation, systems and processes are all there and I've said my piece on them.

We're hurtling down an ever narrowing cul de sac here anyway. I can barely remember how we got here but I think it was in relation to whether this would be a new tax or not.

It isn't, other than by applying a very specific definition of "new tax", which is your one.
 
torblednam said:
So...... all research is useless?
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No that is not what i said ,If you were to go off some research and data the government could borrow a lot more money the Government and taxpayer know better than to go off this data .There possibly is other data that should not be used when it comes to spending taxpayers money if it commits them to increasing rates of taxation in the future that is lawfully possible but may not be collectable.

I paid my lawful water tax only to see the people who took it like my other taxes lawfully sending it back to me because they were not able to collect it even when the law of the land said so.

the under line reason why i am getting it back is because the Government could not show it would be spent well. This now has me questioning how the rest of mt taxes are being spent,

in over 40 years paying tax as a paye worker earning above the average industrial wage taxes are lower now than at any time in my working life any time I ever had to seek services that i paid for through tax you always felt you were getting a good service ,When I look back the rot started when the changed the pay related social insurance for working people,
 
A lot of research is useless because it's not really research - in the sense of trying to determine the best course of action, or the likely impact of an action or investigate an unknown.
The 'research' that you commission, the question that you ask, all of it is implicit bias. Unless the research can give you an unexpected answer, it's not really research. It's justification. It's cover for a course of action you have already decided upon.

I could have commissioned research that encouraging diesel engines would lead to a reduction in C02 emissions. And used this as the basis for action. But unless I also asked, what are the other impacts of diesel engines... the research is worse than useless. It's dangerous.

I'm sure there's a line in "Yes Minister" about not commissioning a report or inquiry unless you know what its answer will be
http://www.venchar.com/2004/02/how_to_discredi.html
 

Have you actually read back to see the context that research came up in? Early Riser was talking about possible reasons for certain attitudes or behaviours around property, and when asked for evidence said,
Early Riser said:
Of the home been seen as an investment in the psychological sense ? No, maybe it exists - I haven't researched it. As a way of passing on wealth ? Opposition to inheritance taxes ?
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Then jj chipped in with
jjm said:
How often do we see someone quoting reserch (sic) to back up there (sic) argument only to see someone else quoting reserch (sic) to back up the opposite view ,(sic)
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which is actually ironic in this context, since Early Riser had acknowledged he was speculating WITHOUT purporting to have research to back up what he was suggesting.

And now you're treating us to a treatise on the usefulness of research, which is even more ironic, given all of the above context and its irrelevance to the thread topic.

And still we're here, several pages into a very heated thread, and no-one has yet made much of a fist at a convincing explanation of why PPR's should be treated different from almost all other types of asset, to the extent of being completely untouchable.
 
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We already have a new tax on PPR's it is called water charges Revenue don't want it they are sending it back to us , torblednam it met all of your arguments about being lawful and so on since the government were forced to put it back in the books it would be possible for Revenue to collect we do not need another new tax after costing a small fortune to set up the last new tax on PPR's ,We need to question have these officials anything better to do with there time looks like the state has away more tax than they require when they pay for people to waste taxpayers hard earned money,
 
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What does water charges have to with taxes or Revenue jj?
 

Well actually that's not what the thread is about.
It's titled "CGT exemption on family home at risk in the Budget."
The unique nature of PPRs is only one of the topics that the discussion of that title has led to.
I have not read a convincing explanation of why the isolated removal of the CGT exemption is a good idea (either at the level of fiscal policy or pure politics) which is its primary topic.

No one is able to come up with a convincing definition of pornography.
And yet, we seem to able to recognise it when we see it.
We're humans.

And housing is a basic human right. So much so that if you do not have a house the state will step in and provide you with accomodation.
Just as we expect the health sector to be treated differently to say, gyms.

Therefore people expect PPRs to be treated differently to other types of assets, especially commercial ones. That doesn't mean it is untouchable, after all, we have property taxes, but it does mean that anyone with any understanding of human nature should appreciate they will be met with a different response when it comes to one's home versus other assets. That there is a much higher threshold of justification we expect when it comes to the government interfering in PPRs versus other assets.
 
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torblednam said:
What does water charges have to with taxes or Revenue jj?
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The money spent to run Irish Water is now collected from taxpayers to the best of my knowlage Revenue collect our tax and by the way do a good job,
 
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