More than one million property tax demands have been sent out, the Revenue Commissioners said yesterday.

A further 600,000 notices of estimate for the tax are to be sent, including 60,000 electronically submitted through the Revenue On-Line Service.

To date 15,000 forms have been filed online, with 10,000 paper returns.

People sent a paper demand have until May 7th to return their own valuations which will replace the estimated value that the Revenue Commissioners put on properties. Those who receive their demand electronically have until May 28th.

Up to yesterday, there had been 35,846 inquiries about the tax to the Revenue Commissioners' online service. Revenue's local property tax project manager Vivienne Dempsey said the vast majority of the questions were "short and straightforward", mostly related to exemptions and deferrals.

Queries
The Revenue Commissioners had fielded a lot of questions over the issue of ownership where somebody ha

d inherited a property or gone through the probate process, she said. She confirmed that people who are the beneficial owners of such properties need to pay the property tax even if their name is not on the deeds.

She said the reason some teenagers were receiving property tax demands, as has been reported, was because there was no complete property register in Ireland. The situation could be easily remedied if people who received erroneous demands contacted the Revenue Commissioners, she said.

"One of the biggest challenges has been matching the right owner with the right property," she told RTÉ yesterday. "Some of the information is not up to date or accurate. The really important message is not to ignore the letter. All you need to do is ring our helpline and give us the details that you are not the owner."

Landlord Tom Brady, who files his tax returns through Revenue's online service, said he discovered only when he went into his account that there was a property tax demand – the online service had not sent him an email.

He said many self-employed people could miss out on paying the tax by the deadline and suffer financial penalties because they might access the site only once a year for payment purposes.

Revenue Commissioners spokeswoman Michelle Carroll said it was intended to send a notification by email to those who used self-assessment.

“We will certainly be making people aware of the tax,” she said.