# "The top 30% of the population pay tax, the bottom 60% are net recipients"



## Brendan Burgess (30 Jan 2015)

I have heard it claimed that the Top 30% of people pay taxes, and the bottom 60% are net recipients.  I wonder if this is true. 


Here is some information from Table A2 of the CSO's Survey of Income and Living Conditions for 2013. It shows all the taxes paid per income decile and the social transfers received.

Does this show that the bottom 60% of earners, are net recipients of social welfare and that the top 30% of income earners are the payers?

Weekly Taxes paid and social welfare received by income decile



What the table means: Someone in the lowest 10% of income, received €98 a week in social transfers, and paid €7 in taxes, so they were net recipients of €91.

Someone in the top 10% of earners, paid €542 in taxes and received €96 of social transfers, so were net payers of €446 per week.


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## Brendan Burgess (2 Feb 2015)

I am not really sure how to interpret this table? 

First of all, it's based on equivalised data.  So a single person living on their own earning €1,000 a week is in the top decile. A married man earning €1,000 a week, with a wife at home, has his income equivalised to €602 which puts him in the 8th decile. 

The thresholds for the different deciles seem very low 



Someone earning €35,000 a year is in the top decile?   Seems wrong to me. 

The Top 30% are earning over €23,660 a year - again this is meaningless to me. 

So can we answer this question: 

"the Top 30% of people pay taxes, and the bottom 60% are net recipients. "

The Revenue's statistical report tells us that that the top 10% of _earners _, those earning over €75,000, pay 55% of all income tax and USC. 

But the top 10% of earners would be a smaller proportion of the overall population.  There are 2,049,617 _cases _in the Revenue's data. 800,000 of these cases are married couples, so the  2 million cases, represents 2.8m adults. How many adults are there in Ireland?


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## Brendan Burgess (2 Feb 2015)

OK, I extracted this data from the [broken link removed] for 2009-2010(two relevant pages attached to this post)


This seems a bit more realistic. The top 10% of households have an income in excess of €104,000 a year.

In 2009/2010, the top 20% (those earning over €80,000)  were the main contributors and the bottom 70% were recipients.

It's still a bit baffling though. A household in the 6th decile with an income over €50,000 a year, is hardly a net recipient?

I might redo the figures, omitting, "older people pensions" as the majority of these are contributory old age pensions.

The introduction of USC will have changed this as now the lower paid are now paying some taxes.

Of course, these cover income taxes and prsi only. They exclude indirect taxes.

Brendan


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## Sophrosyne (2 Feb 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> How many adults are there in Ireland?



3,608,662, according to the 2011 census.

In the 800,000 of married couples are you including one-earner couples?


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## Brendan Burgess (2 Feb 2015)

Sophrosyne said:


> In the 800,000 of married couples are you including one-earner couples



Yes. The CSO gives information for Married Couples with one income and Married Couples with two incomes. I have added both.


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## Sophrosyne (2 Feb 2015)

I was referring more to the number of taxpayers (or earners).



Brendan Burgess said:


> There are 2,049,617 _cases _in the Revenue's data.



Of the stats for married couples, only the two-earner couples refer to two taxpayers.


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## Brendan Burgess (2 Feb 2015)

Hi Sop

But I was referring to the number of people.   _

the 2 million cases, represents 2.8m adults._ 
If there were 3.6 m adults, does that mean we have 800,000 adults not on the Revenue's list. Could be a lot of students and welfare recipients?


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