Dr. Miche?l Collins:

I want to come in later on rezonings and so on. On the local property tax, one of the things we should remember is the importance of that tax in linking households to local government and local authorities and, in a sense, the way in which that tax is and should over time as it develops, give greater links and ownership of the local government system to the people who are paying for it. In a sense, we have all paid, and still do, for local government all the time, up to the introduction of the local property tax, but it was coming through a central fund that was being redistributed out. To a degree, I have always noticed that as local authorities engaged with the people in their areas, they tended to give greater priority to the commercial activity in their area that was paying rates. There was a very visible flow of resources from them into the budget of the local authority and less so to the households in the area and the provision of resources for them for libraries, playgrounds or whatever the other things we can talk about, as local authorities do so many things.

One of the important roles of a local property tax is to make that link much more explicit in order that councils, councillors and individuals living in areas have a much more collective link to the governance and running of those areas. Local property tax is important in doing that. It clearly should be more progressive and there is much more potential for that to happen.

When it was introduced, if I remember correctly, there was - and still is - what might have been referred to at one stage as a “millionaire’s tax”. When one went past a particular threshold, the local property tax went up. It is an issue that arises I suspect in the Deputy’s constituency but only in a few parts around the country. However, there is some merit in that and there is potential for a more progressive structure to that tax as we go on.

I would have concerns that if we took that tax away, it would bring us back to a place that we were previously where there was not enough of a link between people in an area and the decisions that local authorities make on their behalf spending their resources and so on. The local property tax has an important contribution around that.