Holiday homes may face super tax

EDINBURGH, Scotland, March 16 (UPI) -- Local authorities in Scotland plan to increase council taxes for part-time residents in an effort to prevent scenic villages from turning into ghost towns.

The Scottish National Party's plan to reform local taxes includes a provision that allows tax hikes for the owners of second homes, The Scotsman reports. Under the current tax structure, those owners pay 90 percent of the rate because they use fewer local services.

But local officials say some communities are in a double bind with rich outsiders running up the price of real estate so that local residents cannot afford to buy and then spending most of their time elsewhere.

"There are villages under threat because of the number of holiday homes," Peter Grant of the Fife Council said. "There are some parts of Fife, such as the East Neuk, where there are only a small percentage of local people living there, to the extent that pubs don't bother opening during the week in the winter because there is nobody there."

Similar complaints are coming from other countries. In Venice, residents say the city is being taken over by outsiders and in Jerusalem residents complain U.S. and European Jews are buying apartments they use only during the major religious holidays.