Bondholders and Gamblers welcome Property Tax

The International Bondholders and Financial Gamblers Confederation (IBFGC) has welcomed the decision by the government to impose a property tax on homeowners in the forthcoming budget, but has warned the government that they must be ready to “get tough” with non-payment levels which they expect to be “huge”.

“The imposition of this tax is clearly the right thing to do,” said an anonymous spokesperson for IBFGC. “It’s the least that we – the international bondholder and financial gambler community – expect.”

“When we took a gamble on the Irish property market, we thought there might be a small chance of losing. But the Irish government stepped in to cover our losses. We got more than €18billion paid back to us in 2012 and we’re expecting another €17.4billion in 2013.”

“The Fine Gael/Labour government has, thankfully, continued with the policies of their predecessors,” continued the spokesperson. “We congratulate them for the fact that their austerity policies have cut public services to the bone and that they have recognised that it is more important that faceless bankers like us be paid than that money is wasted on things like home help services or the provision of Special Needs Assistants in schools.”

“Imposing this tax will take money directly from social welfare recipients and low-to-middle income earners and give it to us, it’s more than we could ever have hoped for and we’re very grateful. We do, however, have a word of warning for the government. Approximately 50% of owner-occupiers refused to register for last year’s household tax and we have heard that even more people are likely to boycott the proposed property tax. After all the Irish League of Credit Unions, Social Justice Ireland and other bleeding hearts keep harping on about the fact that over 1.8 million people have less than €100 left every month after paying their bills and that over 200,000 children are living below the poverty line. So lots of people are going to claim that they can’t pay this new tax.”

“We’re glad to see that the government is determined to impose this tax,” concluded the spokesperson. “But we’re very worried that the Irish people seem to be getting a bit uppity. Not alone did they refuse in huge numbers to pay the household tax, but they’ve been getting organised through the Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes right throughout the country. We’ve heard they intend to protest outside the Dáil when the budget is being announced and that they intend to organise what they’re calling a ‘massive boycott’ of the property tax.”

“We call on the government to get tough with these malcontent non-payers and ensure that they are forced to pay and that we are allowed to continue to get back our gambling losses.”

The Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes (CAHWT) protest against the property tax and austerity budget will meet at the Central Bank, Dame St. at 4:30pm on Wednesday 5th December to march to the Dáil.