The government came under further fire last night after announcing a €10 penalty for those who don’t pay the second home (NPPR) charge online.
Under the new rules, those who opt to pay the €200 property tax at a local authority office instead of online, will now pay a €10 handling fee.
The tax, entering its third year, must be paid by June 30th by anyone who owns a second property. More than 300,000 were forced to pay the charge last year.
The latest moves comes at a time when the government is already being heavily criticised over payment methods for the new €100 household charge, which almost 1.2 million homeowners have yet to register despite the deadline for payment being this Saturday.
They have also been criticised over suggestions that they may ask local authority workers to go door to door to collect payments from those who do not pay.
As of 5pm yesterday, just 363,478 had paid the charge – a rise of just 35,277 since Friday.
Another 25,000 postal applications are understood to have been received but not yet processed but even so, the government would now need almost a quarter of a million householders a day to register before Saturday’s deadline in order to hit their 1.6 million target.
The government are urging everyone to comply by paying and insist that households will be given just two warnings – one verbal, followed by a written warning – before legal action is taken.
