Irish Left Archive: No To The Property Tax, poster, United Left Alliance, 2012 January 3, 2022
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This poster joins a range of other documents in the Archive relating to the United Left Alliance. As the Archive notes:
The United Left Alliance was a loose electoral grouping of a number of left political parties and independents which contested the 2011 General Election. Its constituent elements included the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and the Workers and Unemployed Action Group. Five candidates were elected at the 2011 General Election. In 2012 the WUAG withdrew from the ULA and in 2013 the SP left, leaving it essentially defunct.
However it is also important as it is a document from the Property Tax Campaign
Notably this poster was issued by Clare Daly TD, by then an independent TD having formerly been elected as a Socialist Party TD.
To hear the Irish Election Literature podcast on the ULA please go here.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Look, I’m thick I know.
But I’m a leftist who is in favour of property taxes. As a progressive measure. Big time. Like, the more property you have the harder you’re hit by the tax, the more you have to pay. Tax the property-owning bastards until they get down on their knees and beg the commune to take their ill-gotten property back off them to be shared among the communards.
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And tax all property, not just houses, apartments and other real estate. Own a van Gogh or Picasso pencil sketch that’s worth, oh, €1.2m? Yes, that’s property.
Beneficiary of a trust? Yeah, property for which you will be taxed.
Shares in a firm above a threshold? Yes, that’s property, and no, we won’t wait until the gains are realised as cash to tax you on the capital gain, we are taxing the wealth along the way too.
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Tend to agree.All wealth, including housing, has to be taxed. I can see why tactically the route was taken but it always sat uneasily with me.
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Owning a second house should be a privilege you bloody well pay for (the latest fashion, the ‘accidental landlord’, can go take a run and jump). Matched by sobering fines on unoccupied and abandoned properties in danger of dereliction.
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Also. Owning a first house.
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Well we will now have renters paying for second homes and mansions due to the Mica scandal.
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“NO TO THE PROPERTY TAX” — United Left Alliance
“Tell me, do you ever open a book at all?”
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A quote from At Swim Two Birds. Always welcome. But the relevance?
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Left politics cannot just be about things that people don’t like. There has to be some level of critical analysis.
Taxes on property are fundamental to even a minimal left programme anywhere. It is reasonable to oppose the scale or the applicability of a property tax but principled opposition (even as a slogan)…..?
“EDUCATE, Organise, Agitate”
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A basic human right is to have a roof over your head. That’s why I’m not in favour of any tax on one’s home. Additional homes and assets should attract tax appropriately. But if protest against a home tax can be a focus for agitational politics, let it rip.
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That raises an important point, how one can vindicate that human right while also allowing for taxation of housing property. Personally I don’t see the two in conflict. There’s many ways to deal with it – proportional levels of taxation – and with very clear allowances when owners are occupiers. But I find it difficult to believe that somehow unlike any other property a house, even when used as a home, is different to any other sort of property – not least given the huge range of houses that are extant.
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An owner-occupier democracy is an admirable liberal objective, an effective basis for agitation and a secure barrier against socialism
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An owner-occupier democracy is an admirable liberal objective, an effective basis for agitation and a secure barrier against socialism
Getting rid of the petty landlord class will do a lot to remove that ‘barrier against socialism’, which already exists out there. Even something tangential like long-term security of tenure would surely be something radical, worthwhile and easy to argue for?
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Fair enough, EWI, we can all see the value of supporting something radical, especially when it addresses the understandable concerns of others.
WbS I see the points you are making, and like the reference to allowances etc., though I don’t fully agree that we shouldn’t argue against the home tax.
Bobd, one of the reasons for the revolutionary left to make headway in today’s world is a failure to engage with those resisting austerity measures like the Property Tax here by keeping fighting campaigns as broad, diverse elements in a democratic manner united in fighting the common enemy- capitalism.
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I think my position would be I fully agree with you re a right to housing and a home but that that doesn’t necessitate a right for house or home to be untaxed. Or put it another way, I would never want someone put out of their home over taxation but that the state/polity/community has a right to expect either during or end of tendency (contingent on ability to pay in the former case) some degree of tax. I’ve a deeper problem with private ownership in any case and feel shared ownership is perhaps a better way to go in any case. There’s a further issue as to what constitutes private property and so on which is very interesting.
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Many topics there, worthy for consideration. Also that the property tax is due for payment by those who own (not rent from state authorities) a residential property. Yet when people protested against this tax which they rightly saw as double taxation, and thousands mobilised in anger, the revolutionary left alone called for its non-payment. The pertinent issue is this: which side are we on? The fact that the battle wasn’t won doesn’t make it wrong. It radicalised many people.
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I guess it’s like any campaign, it can radicalise but it can go in different directions of radicalisation. For example some of the freeman stuff which ran parallel to the campaigns certainly got a bit of a boost from them – doesn’t make the campaigns wrong but one has to have front and centre the fact that one’s politics does require equity up to and including taxation of property. Granted that’s difficult in a campaign but absolutely necessary so that people don’t feel later they’ve been let down or lied to.
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My point was not that the left should not be involved in agitation against policies that bear on the working class but that it should never shirk its responsibility to educate. It was reasonable to oppose the the “Property Tax” as extra burden on the homes of working people but for a significant minority of the population, houses are also a form of capital accumulation which should be taxed and we should not have shirked that issue. Actual property taxes such as CGT and inheritance taxes treat such capital accumulation fairly benignly
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