With regard to the publishing of the NAMA bill, the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute (IAVI) sounds a note of welcome to recent changes to the NAMA bill and support any measures which serve to protect taxpayers and improve the flow of credit in the economy.

According to IAVI President Aine Myler “We agree in principle with the Bill’s new provisions for more risk-sharing from the banks with the introduction of the provision allowing NAMA to use subordinated debt to part-pay for loans.

“However, the provision for a windfall tax of 80% on profits gained from increases in land value, due to rezoning, requires careful analysis. If implemented, it will act as a depressor to market value. Taxing the use and development of all land to the point of unviability appears to be a headline grabbing, political manoeuvre to make the NAMA legislation more palatable. A more comprehensive approach to the taxation of land should have been introduced when the values were increasing i.e. during the boom years. Doing so now merely serves to further undermine the market.

“Development has become a dirty word of late and yet a thriving economy requires infrastructural and development activity. If there is little or no incentive for development due to penal tax rates, then we can start to usher in a new era of stagnation while the rest of the world goes forward without us. We don’t need tax rates to drive down the cost of land, the market is doing this all by itself,” she said.

Ends