JUST UNDER 65,000 individuals or couples have claimed the Rent Tax Credit this year out of an estimated 400,000 individuals who are eligible to apply, new figures show.
The figures were given to Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin in response to a Parliamentary Question.
The Rent Tax Credit was introduced in Budget 2023 as a measure to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, and was worth up to €500 a year that tax-paying renters could claim back. This was increased to €750 in this year’s Budget.
Latest figures up to 15 November, show that just 64,901 “taxpayer units” (individuals or couples claiming) had claimed the credit for this year. This is despite the Department of Finance (which oversees the credit via Revenue) estimating that 400,000 individuals are eligible to claim it.
In total, according to the figures supplied, 311,910 Rent Tax Credit claims have been made by 268,306 taxpayer units for 2022 and 2023 to date. This breaks down as:
Reasons for low uptake
Judging by the newly released figures, the vast majority of those eligible to claim the credit have not yet done so. Claimants will, however, have up to four years to claim the credit for this year.
In his response to the PQ, Finance Minister Michael McGrath said that the Rent Tax Credit statistics available refer only to claims by PAYE taxpayers, with data on the number of claims made by self-assessed income taxpayers not available until next year.
As well as this, PAYE workers have the option to either claim the credit as rent is incurred, or at the end of the year in their income tax return. Claims for the latter option may not be processed yet, which may explain part of the large discrepancy for claims made last year and this year.
In September Eoin Ó Broin raised a number of concerns about the credit, calling the low uptake then “very concerning”.
What it shows is that a very significant number of renters either don’t know about this Tax Credit or they haven’t claimed it.
He claimed that the Government had not done enough to promote the credit, and also took issue with the fact that a tenancy had to be registered with the RTB before the credit could be claimed, saying that this was a barrier for people.
In September, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance said that Revenue was “conducting an information campaign to highlight the ease of use of the online myAccount system and to raise awareness of a range of key tax credits and reliefs available to taxpayers including the rent tax credit”.
With reporting from Jane Matthews
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