People who read the website will already know my position on the design of the new property tax and that I have been working to make changes to the implementation of this tax where possible. (Read more here).

There was a positive development in relation to the property tax yesterday, with the government agreeing that local authorities will retain 80% of the taxes raised in their functional area. This is something that I and others had called for when the proposal to retain only 65% was first mentioned.

It is good news because it means that people will now know that the majority of their property taxes will be spent locally on the services they use every day, so they will benefit directly from the tax.

But I think we should take it a step further.

I think we should give proper transparency as to how that money will be used in the local area so that people can follow their taxes to the area of spend and get involved in the debate with their locally elected Councillors about how their taxes are being spent and the areas that should receive priority.

Last year I introduced the Tax Transparency Bill 2012 to provide greater transparency around how our national taxes are spent (read more here). This proposal received all party support and is awaiting committee stage. I think it’s important that we bring Tax Transparency to our local taxes too.

How?

Read more here.