HOME TAX: OWNERS TO DECIDE ON THE VALUE OF THEIR OWN PROPERTY - Homeowners will assess the value of their own house to pay the property tax, the Irish Independent has confirmed. It has also been revealed that there will be severe penalties for anyone who undervalues their house - with the fines being imposed by the taxman. Homeowners will simply tick off the value of their home on a checklist provided by the Revenue Commissioners. This checklist will be posted out on July 1 next - with a major publicity campaign being kicked off in March. The Revenue Commissioners will police the payment by carrying out spot checks by comparing the values of houses in the same areas. Residents will be given the choice of paying the tax by credit or debit card, cheque or taken directly from wages by the taxman. The charge must raise €500m in badly needed revenues for the Government. The Irish Independent has confirmed that the value of your home will fall into different bands, with the amount of tax to be paid rising with the value of the property. The property tax is expected to be around €300 for an average, three-bedroom, semi-detached house. But the different bands will mean the tax will range from about €250 to €400. Homeowners in cities will end up paying more, because property values are higher and the tax treats the house as an asset. The Revenue Commissioners will be in charge of collecting the payment and given powers to chase dodgers. Revenue will carry out an information blitz ahead of next spring and will write directly to homeowners informing them of their obligations.
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SISK RUNS OUT OF ROAD IN POLAND AFTER TWO YEARS - Irish construction group Sisk are pulling out of Poland at a cost of between €50 million and €60 million. The Irish Times says that the decision was taken after it encountered a series of delays and extra costs linked to what it says are intractable and ongoing difficulties with the Polish road authority. Over the last two years the company has put about €90 million into its Polish operations which account for around 10% of Sisk’s overall revenue. The Irish construction company, which posted after-tax profits of €8 million in 2010, entered the Polish market as part of a joint venture with Limerick-based company Roadbridge in the summer of 2010, winning tenders to build three separate road projects, totalling 92km. The contracts were joint ventures with two Polish construction companies, Budbaum and listed company PBG. Both companies collapsed earlier this year. Of the three road projects, one has been completed, while the other two are 70% and 48% finished. Sisk, which made the decision to pull out of the market on Thursday of last week, will now spend a month clearing up the sites, before leaving the country. More than 3,000 workers were employed across the three sites, most of whom were Polish subcontractors. Roadbridge and Sisk employed about 400 people on the projects. Sisk chief executive Liam Nagle said yesterday there would be no job losses as a result of the move, with staff redeployed elsewhere.
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FED INSISTS POLITICS HAD NO ROLE IN DECISION - Ben Bernanke’s reign at the US Federal Reserve since 2006 has seen much drama and many policy innovations. But the launch of open-ended quantitative easing, with a pledge to continue until the labour market improves, may turn out to be one of the most important, writes the Financial Times. One of the biggest failures of previous rounds of QE - as the policy of buying assets in order to drive down interest rates is known - was that its effects were lumpy and hard to predict. Once the purchases were announced, markets priced them in and that was that. The new policy will mean that whenever there is weak economic data the market will assume a continuation of QE. That should prove to be a powerful stabilising force to support the recovery. Mr Bernanke made clear that the Fed does not plan to keep easing policy all the way back to full employment, but it wants to see a clear path towards that goal and that is likely to involve a significant programme of easing. “We’re looking for something that involves unemployment coming down in a sustained way, not necessarily a rapid way, because I don’t know if our tools are that strong, but we’d like to see an economy which is strong enough that it will support improving labour market conditions,” said the Fed chairman.
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AFTER FOUR YEARS, A PAYOUT FOR UNSECURED CREDITORS - The London Independent says that the liquidator to the London-based Lehman Brothers International will reveal today that it is ready to pay the first dividend to unsecured creditors, four long years after the investment bank's demise left the world on the brink of financial armageddon. But PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is handling the US business's London arm, warned that despite much-touted plans to force banks to draw up "living wills" designed to secure an orderly wind-down, "progress to date is varied and in many respects these plans only scratch the surface of the problems that would arise if another Lehman-style event were ever to unfold". Privately regulators say they continue to lose sleep over the possibility of another "mega-bank" of Lehman's size and complexity - or even bigger - collapsing, and are furious at the banking industry's multimillion-pound lobbying campaign designed to stymie reform. The lead administrator for PwC, Tony Lomas, described the liquidation of Lehman as "the biggest and most complex administration I've ever worked on".
