Two out of every three homeowners did not accept the values suggested by the Revenue Commissioners for the purposes of the residential property tax.
Almost a quarter said their apartments or houses were worth less than €100,000. Revenue had expected 15 per cent of properties have such valuations.
On average, the values returned to the Revenue were below those suggested, though 240,000 taxpayers put a higher value on their properties than had been outlined to them, according to the latest report from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The report says that 786,000 taxpayers said their properties were worth less than had been suggested, while 783,000 accepted the valuations.
Of those who said their properties were worth more, 125,000 taxpayers increased the valuations by one band (€50,000), while 56,000 increased them by two bands (€100,000), and 59,000 by three bands (€150,000) or more.
The Revenue’s model requires taxpayers to place the value of their properties within bands of €50,000.
For those who returned lower valuations to those suggested to them by the Revenue, 515,000 reduced the value by one band, 177,000 by two bands, and 94,000 by three bands or more.
Only 0.2 per cent, or 3,600 properties, were given a value of more than €1 million. This was 21 per cent more than the number of properties in that band the Revenue had expected. In relation to the lowest band (€0 to€100,000), 24 per cent of properties (422,000) were declared to be in this range.
The Revenue has accepted a recommendation from the C&AG that it carry out in-depth, on-site reviews of properties in designated areas, in order to validate the valuations submitted.
It also agreed that it would carry out a review of taxpayers who claimed an exemption because their properties were on unfinished estates. A review of a sample of 50 such exemptions, found that 40 per cent were not supported by the available evidence.
The C&AG concluded that the Revenue Commissioners had been “very effective” in compiling a residential property register for the tax in a short timeframe. At the end of June of this year, there were 1.95 million properties on the register, approximately 40,000 less than the number indicated by the 2011 national census.
The compliance rate for the local property tax, at 97.4 per cent, has been higher than had been anticipated, with €259 million collected in respect of 2013.
