The Government’s householdcharge.ie website could probably do with some SEO love. When I search for irish household charge the first page of results are news websites, a political party and a property website’s blog.
Maybe they need to open a blog there talking up the household charge and, oh I don’t know, making us feel better about introducing a new tax.
I’m obviously not the only one looking either. They don’t even make it easy to give them money.. Not that I or any of the other householders want to either.
BTW – today’s the last day if you want to set up a direct debit. There, that’s the Public Service bit out of the way. Now, where’s my credit card?
So, if you own a house in Ireland, what do you think will happen if you don’t pay this charge?
They’re getting lots of useful info out of the registration process:
1. PPS number, which I think is too much as I’m not taxed, it’s my property.
2. Water connection type for my property.
3. Property type.
Plenty of scope for increasing charges or making them fairer next year.
I’ll evaluate risk at the very last minute. I would prefer not to pay it as civil disobedience, but if there’s a risk of prosecution I won’t go that route. I suspect that’s the route a lot of people are taking, but of course I’ve zero evidence for the assertion.
I went to cuteand[something] on the way here, what’s that about? 🙂 On mobile, too lazy to look.
Many people are probably waiting until the last minute too. It’ll be interesting to see if they take any action.
I typed my CC details into their site. They weren’t joking that it might take a few minutes. I’m sure that was about 10 minutes ago!
Oh, that was domain mapping kicking into action, doing a remote login I think. This is now a WordPress multisite install! 🙂
Thankfully I got an email receipt for payment so only the web side of it is screwed.
I can’t believe many people will go through the whole process on the website – it’s way too complex (not to mention the political reasons for not paying).
I guess the next stage will be for letters to arrive with your electricity bill – there aren’t many houses without electric and when the bill was passed they got permission to work with ESB records etc.
And if the whole thing’s a failure with a mass campaign of civil disobedience do you think there will be refunds for those who paid? 😉
Refunds? Of course there’ll be refunds! Oh look, there’s a pig flying overhead!