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Ireland Faces Popular Revolt Over New Property Tax - Tea Party Socialists? Why the left is leading a tax revolt in Ireland
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Debt-mired Ireland is facing a revolt over its new property tax.
The government said less than half of the country's 1.6 million households paid the charge by Saturday's deadline to avoid penalties. And about 5,000 marched in protest against the annual conference of Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party.
Emotions ran raw as police backed by officers on horseback stopped demonstrators from entering the Dublin Convention Centre. Many protesters booed and heckled passers-by who were wearing Fine Gael conference passes, some screaming vulgar insults in their faces.
Protesters jostled with police as they tried to block the way of Fine Gael activists using a back entrance. One man mistakenly identified as the government minister responsible for collecting the tax had to be rescued by police from an angry scrum.
Kenny said his government had no choice, but to impose the new charge as part of the nation's efforts to emerge from an international bailout. Ireland already has endured five emergency budgets in four years and expects to face at least four more years of austerity.
"The household charge is the law of the land," said Kenny, who noted that people were paying the tax over the Internet at a rate of 5,000 an hour Saturday.
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The charge this year is a flat-fee €100 ($130) per dwelling, but is expected to rise dramatically next year once Ireland starts to vary the charge based on a property's estimated value. Anti-tax campaigners have urged the public to ignore the tax demand, arguing that the government doesn't have the power to collect it.
More at [link to abcnews.go.com]
'Tea Party socialists?' Why the left is leading a tax revolt in Ireland.
As the deadline passed midnight Sunday for payment of a new government fee, only 49 percent of households had signed up to pay amid frustration with the government's austerity agenda.
A majority of Irish households have refused to pay a new government fee in a tax revolt led, unusually, by socialists.
The Irish government levied the new tax in an attempt to shore up the country's finances that were devastated by economic collapse and a series of bank bailouts. But as the deadline passed midnight Sunday, only 49 percent of households had signed up to pay.
With no rioting and few protests, Ireland had been until now the quietest of the ravaged economies on the fringes of the European Union. However, the tax revolt reveals significant frustration here to budgetary reforms and foreshadows trouble ahead for the government's efforts to meet EU bailout demands.
More - [link to www.csmonitor.com]
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