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Cowen Gives in on Stamp Duty
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Policy
Stamp Duty is officially reformed, for residential property there is a two-tier regime for property under €1 million. For property up to €125,000 there is a 0% rate and up to €1 million its one rate of 7%. Below the fold is the pilfered feed from the budget site at Ireland.com
# A 9 per cent stamp duty rate will apply on the balance of house prices over €1m
# New residential stamp duty rate of zero up to €125,000 and a 7 per cent on the excess up to a limit of €1m
# Mortgage interest relief to rise by €2,000 for a single person and €4,000 for a married couple
# Duty on credit cards to fall from €40 to €30
# Four out of every 5 tax-payers will pay at the standard rate
# Band for 20 per cent standard rate widened by €1,400 to €35,400
# €84 million extra for Overseas Development Aid
# Excise on cigarettes to rise 30 cents from midnight
# €16.2 billion for health spending in 2008
# Child benefit to rise €8 per month for third and subsequent children to €203
# Child benefit to rise €6 per month for first and second children to €166
# Non-contributory pension to rise €12 to €212 a week
# Contributory pension to rise €14 to €223 a week
# Allocating €21m to fishing boat decommissioning scheme
# New capital gains tax relief for the break-up of a farm
# €370m for grants to 60,000 farmers under Rural Environmental Protection Scheme
# €13.2m allocated to energy research
# Motor tax for cars over 2.5 litres to rise 11 per cent
# Motor tax for cars under 2.5 litres to rise 9.5 per cent
# New VRT system will be broadly revenue neutral
# New VRT system will have 7 bands, ranging from 14 per cent to 36 per cent
# Revised VRT scheme based on CO2 emissions will apply from July 1st.
# Target of 3 per cent a year reduction in CO2 emissions
# €1.7bn for social housing measures
# €95m extra for primary school building programme
# Education expenditure will be €9.3bn in 2008
# €1bn for public transport
# €600m for regional and local roads
# €2.7bn for airports, ports and national secondary roads
# Government has agreed to an efficiency review across all spending departments
# We must get back to lower single digit increases in public spending as quickly as possible - Cowen
# Growth in capital spending of 12 per cent
# Growth in total spending of 8.6 per cent
# GDP growth for 2008 will be 3 per cent
# €8.6 billion for capital investment for 2008
# Spending in 2008 will be €53bn
# Government deficit of 0.9 per cent for 2008
# Economy will grow more modestly next year - Cowen
As I read the stamp duty reform, it’s actually an increase in stamp duty for some people. The new regime is basically a flat rate of 7% above the exemption. But any house under €381,000 was paying at most 6% under the old system. On the other hand, over €635,000 under the old system was paying 9%. So the benefit is really tilted towards the more expensive houses now.
Who is yer man effing and blinding at the Sinn Fein speaker?
also the clock on this site seems to be 28 minutes fast.
Cowen shouldn’t want to, doesn’t want to, and doesn’t pretend to want to, push up house prices again. The ultimate scale of the crash won’t be affected by any little fiddling with stamp duty, and nobody (including Cowen) seriously believes it will push prices up.
This change might simply increase volume (rate of selling) and not really affect the prices. When prices have dropped 30%+ who’s going to notice a percent or two stamp duty.
But of course, we have fraudsters like auctioneers and estate agents talking about meaningless things like “confidence” and trying to say that prices might go up again. Ignore those scum, take this opportunity to get out now if you can.
For recent first time buyers, who are now already in negative equity and are more than likely spending over 50% of their take home pay on the mortgage, you are screwed.
Look at the bright side,at least you wont go to jail if you have just bought on a 100% mortgage and hand back the keys!
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has admitted that action needs to be taken to deal with the situation in which some 36,000 people are said to be evading bench warrants for their arrest.
Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore said the figure of 36,000 had been obtained from the garda computer system on November 25. He added that there were 111,453 outstanding warrants in total, which was “equivalent to the population of a large five seat constituency”.
More here on a visit i made to the Joy,myself, to see the overcrowding (more prison officers than prisoners!)
http://www.soldiersofdestiny.org/massagingcrime.htm