recoup (v.) recouped, recouping, recoups
v. tr.
To receive an equivalent for; make up for: recoup a loss.
To return as an equivalent for; reimburse.
Law. To deduct or withhold (part of something due) for an equitable reason.v. intr.
To regain a former favorable position.
So when we are told that a committee of the Irish parliament will tell the Irish government that it should…
…use taxes or development levies to recoup some of the windfall profits made by property speculators when their land is rezoned.
… we are being told the Irish government should receive an equivalent for; make up for: recoup a loss.
Now how exactly does a property owner profiting from a change in the manner in which the Irish state abridges their property rights (i.e. land use zoning), thereby cause the Irish state a loss that needs to be recouped?
It should be clear that what we have here is an example of our old friend ‘meta-context’ at work again. Underpinning the suggested tax increase is the unspoken axiom that the economy exists for the purpose of allowing the state to acquire resources and any profits derived from the economy which benefit someone else other than the state are in fact a ‘loss’ for the state. That is to say, this is just a slight variation on the bizarre economic fallacy that someone else getting richer perforce makes someone else poorer. The self-evident concept of wealth creation simply does not register.
I wonder how many people sitting in that Oireachtas committee set to tell the Irish leader to increase those taxes would find the notion that the only reason the state ‘allows’ people to engage in economic activity for their own benefit at all is so that the state can tax them? My guess is that it would not be a commonly held overt belief but if you were to actually strap a number of mainstream Irish journalists and TDs to chairs and question them, teasing out the unspoken underlying assumptions within which they see the world, that is indeed what you would discover to be the case.
It is the same metacontext that leads to the allegation that British private schools are “subsidised” because, as charities, they are exempted from paying certain taxes.
Yes, Cydonia, exactly correct!
Here in the State of WI, USA, we have an issue of zoning and property taxes and maybe this is something similar. There is perceived gap between land used for farming, and its inherent value, and land used for personal housing, and its value. The value of land zoned residential is seen to be much more valuable than farm land. This has come about over the last few years after years of farmers having to pay property taxes at the higher value (as if it were residential). They of course howled that they couldn’t bear the burden, and the State of WI distinguished between the two, giving the farmers a break.
But since then, a new animal has developed, a farmer decides not farm anymore, or farms a little piece and pays the much lower property tax bill, meanwhile fully planning on having it rezoned and subdivided. Therefore the local municipalities have been giving them the benefit of the doubt all the while and charging them lower taxes. I see a recoup meaning to make a levy for back taxes ‘abated’ while it was supposedly used for a non-residential purpose.
Just pointing out an example. To my mind if the State were reasonably proportioned, assessment would likely be much closer together regardless of use, and not too burdensome either way.
Exactly the same thing goes on in the British planning system. There are Section 186 “agreements” and Section 172 “agreements” where developers pay local authorities a negotiated sum based on their notional gain from receiving planning permission. The same sort of arrangement is going on with regard to “affordable” housing (sneer quotes fully intended) where developers are forced to give up part of a site or a development to social housing otherwise their schemes will be refused permission. Livingstone is trying to make this 50% of all sites in London.
It’s actually worse than this. This is certainly the “meta-context” but what is truly depressing is that they frame it this way because they know it will appeal to a majority of people who share that same meta-context. People who complain about house prices and imagine that it is all the fault of “greedy builders” or “land speculators”. This, however is their “beard” explanation for extra levies.
The real purpose of these latest levies – which by the way will be paid for by housebuyers in increased house prices which the restricted market can easily stand – is to fund runaway public spending by local authorities. This is caused by the government’s disastrous “benchmarking” initiative, designed to placate powerful public sector unions which was set up to deliver private sector salaries (at the increased level of about two years ago, since then salaries have fallen back) to public sector workers without accounting for any “risk premium”. One irony is that rising house prices was one of the purported reasons why the public sector unions kicked up in the first place!
Ah property taxes. The grim reminder that The State owns all the land!
David, you’re exactly right. It is in fact that kissingly simple. Here in the States there’s a growing tendency for some in government (typically but not always liberals) to regard all property as owned by the government, with some of it allowed to be cared for by individual citizens at its sufference and able to be confiscated at the government’s convenience. You won’t hear it described that way by people who promote the idea, but it’s a condition necessary to support their rationale that (purportedly private) property is to be ‘recouped’ for the supposed general good of the community. Under this system there’s no such thing as private property. Unfortunately it’s the basis of much Democratic Party thinking here at the moment. Maybe the communist world view isn’t as dead as we’d hoped.
Usually in Ireland you have to pay the politicians in cash to get planning permission / rezoning.
Witness endless corruption scandals which result in err, well, nothing.