Alarmist media headlines over the past week give the impression that €2,500 could easily be deducted from the wages and welfare payments of householders boycotting the registration and payment of the new household tax. In fact such legislation does not even exist at this time. Nor does any legislation allow for the tax itself to be deducted.
The headlines add to the scaremongering by the government which sees the anger of ordinary people over a new burden on them and hopes to intimidate and frighten them into submission.
The critical issue here is that there should be a massive boycott of the registration and payment of this new tax. The government has set a deadline of March 31st for registration, but if as the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes urges, we arrive at the end of March with a massive number of householders refusing to register, this will demonstrate that this tax does not have any legitimacy and that a powerful campaign can be built to defeat it.
It is quite amazing that the government is willing to consider forcibly deducting fines from the poor and from ordinary people but has treated rich developers and bankers with kid gloves.
People should not be detered by the government’s threats as a whole range of steps would have to be gone through to deduct a fine.
After legislation, a person would have to be identified as liable for the tax, summonsed to court and brought before a judge for not registering for the tax; a case proved that they should have registered; and then a fine issued. Only if this fine is unpaid could an attachment order be issued.
If one million people refuse to cooperate with registration, these threats would be made utterly unworkable.
