Does Residential Property Tax live on?
Although Residential Property Tax (RPT) was abolished in 1997, vendors are still obliged to produce and furnish to a purchaser a certificate of clearance on a disposal of residential property if the property was acquired before April 1996.
For this purpose there is a notional threshold of €436,000.00. Where the sale price exceeds this figure, on contracts signed on or after 5 April 2001, a certificate must be applied for.
In the early days following abolition, this application, in some cases, triggered an additional liability to RPT where figures used in returns may not have been a true representation of the market value for the relevant year. The Revenue Commissioners are entitled to revisit the file on such an application and a clearance certificate will not issue until the matter is resolved and any additional tax paid. It is less likely now, as the dramatic rise in property values has occurred since the abolition of RPT, that any additional tax liability will arise, but the possibility lives on and the obligation remains.
Peter Harrison
June 2003