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Concept
Absentee landlord
Summary
In economics, an absentee landlord is a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist Thorstein Veblen's 1923 book of the same name, Absentee Ownership. Overall, tax policy seems to favour absentee ownership. However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land. Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss.
Absentee landlords were a highly significant issue in the history of Ireland. During the course of 16th and 17th centuries, most of the land in Ireland was confiscated from Irish Catholic landowners during the Plantations of Ireland and granted to Scottish, Welsh and English settlers who were members of the established churches (the Church of England and the Church of Ireland at the time); in Ulster, many of the landowners were Scottish Presbyterians. Confiscated land was also given to absentee Protestant landlords in Great Britain, some of whom rented it out to the Irish, while they themselves remained residents of Scotland, Wales and England. By 1782 the Irish politician Henry Grattan deplored that some £800,000 was transferred annually to such landlords. He attempted to place an extra tax on remittances to absentee British landowners. Many absentees also reinvested part of their rents into roads and bridges, to improve local economies, that are still seen today. A notable beneficial absentee in the 19th century was Lord Palmerston, who went into debt to develop his part of Sligo; an investment that eventually paid off.
By the 1800s resentment grew as not only were the absentee landlords Protestant (while most tenants were Catholic and forbidden to inherit land), but their existence meant that the goods produced in Ireland were primarily exported. This system became particularly detrimental to the Irish population during the Great Famine when, despite Ireland being a net exporter of food, millions starved, died of disease, or emigrated.
Official source
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