Poll: Should Ireland introduce a land tax?
Economist David McWilliams has suggested such a levy would fix the housing crisis.
ROCKSTAR ECONOMIST DAVID McWilliams has suggested that Ireland should introduce a “significant” land tax if it wants to fix the housing crisis.
Writing in the Irish Times last Saturday, McWilliams drew inspiration from a policy that was introduced in Japan in the mid-19th century.
He wrote that planners in Tokyo realised the country couldn’t compete with the West because wealth was tied up in land.
A land tax reduced the incentive for landlords to ‘hoard’ land and encouraged them to either use land more efficiently or sell it.
Such a measure in Ireland would prevent land owners from ”gouging a growing population that needs a place to live”, he said.
McWilliams made a similar suggestion in an Irish Independent column earlier this year, in which he described land as a “useless asset”.
The rural development chairman of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association, Seamus Sherlock, rebutted at the time and said the proposal to tax land was “populist nonsense”.
Sherlock claimed McWilliams ignored the fact that outside cities, land in Europe is used to feed the population, attract tourists and provide renewable energy.
With that in mind, we’re asking Fora readers this week: Should Ireland introduce a land tax?
