Alan Shatter's campaign to abolish Inheritance Tax

The Horseman said:
How many pension pots were wiped out following the 2008 financial crisis?
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I think that the main cause of pension pots being wiped out was people borrowing money in their pension funds to buy property.

Most people did not borrow in their pension funds and most did genuinely diversify and so they survived the crisis ok.
 
I was just reading this article in the journal and I wonder is it correct. It says 97% of people do not pay inheritance tax, so nothing to see here, it won’t affect you.

But this is usually once in a lifetime event. On the death of your second parent (as usually the spouse inherits everything when the first parent dies). So in any given year when a second parent dies how many pay inheritance tax?

Deaths. There were 35,459 registered deaths in Ireland in 2023, of which 18,361 were males and 17,098 were females. There were 29,700 deaths registered for persons aged 65 and over in 2023 and this accounted for more than four-fifths (83.8%) of all deaths.

So assume parents are over 65 - 30K in a year, assume 50% were the second parent, - 15K. Then you need to account for the number who dies who have no children (or do you as nephews/nieces may inherit). Let’s stick with 15K. Is the real question - how many of those 15K have assets that breach the inheritance threshold? Let’s say 70% (home ownership average, although the chances are older people are more likely to own a house).

So could you say 70% of those whose second parent dies in any year would be likely to pay inheritance tax? Only 0.2% of the population but since it is a once in a life time event very significant to you in that year. And since it impacts so few people every year should the government scrap the tax. It is not significant to the majority of the population and it impacts the individual significantly only once.
 
Yes it is significant but there is an underlying asset inherited on which the tax is based. So they can settle tax from own resources and keep the asset or sell the asset to pay the tax. Or if the inheritance is cash then they net less cash than was inherited. So they have resources to fund the tax, it's not a tax on their normal income.
 
Stats on CAT receipts here:




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New article on the RTE news website yesterday:

www.rte.ie

38% of adults received a substantial gift or inheritance

More than a third of adults here have received a substantial gift or inheritance, new research has found.
www.rte.ie www.rte.ie

I thought to myself, Janey Mac this is awful journalism, as the glaring issue is that it never explains what a "substantial gift or inheritance" is, in monetary terms. Though to be fair to RTE, the survey itself DOES NOT appear to have defined it either, for the respondents. A link to the survey is available here for anyone interested, although the results are largely useless because of the completely fundamental issue of "substantial" not being defined.

I find myself wondering if it was actually defined for the respondents, but the BPFI are playing ducks and drakes by not letting the rest of us in on it. I find it hard to believe that the majority of respondents wouldn't immediately have asked, "When you say substantial, how much are we talking about?" when the question was put to them...

 
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torblednam said:
I thought to myself, Janey Mac this is awful journalism, as the glaring issue is that it never explains what a "substantial gift or inheritance" is
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On today's Morning Ireland, Ailbhe Conneely told us that the number of drug related poisonings had increased from 2019 to 2020 and fallen by 17% between 2020 and 2021. But no absolute numbers. I have no idea whether it was 10 or 10,000. (nor did she explain why we are getting the 2021 figures towards the end of 2024)
 
torblednam said:
I thought to myself, Janey Mac this is awful journalism, as the glaring issue is that it never explains what a "substantial gift or inheritance" is, in monetary terms. But to be fair to RTE, the survey itself DOES NOT appear to have defined it either, for the respondents. A link to the survey is available here for anyone interested, although the results are largely useless because of the completely fundamental issue of "substantial" not being defined.
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It was awful journalism. They shouldn't have reported on such a flawed survey. The article should have been about why the BPFI published such flawed data.
 
torblednam said:
It's almost like they have an agenda and are trying to generate / influence public opinion in a particular direction...
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I very much doubt it.

RTE is repeatedly accused of having a left wing agenda.

What is the agenda in this piece?

To increase the thresholds for inheritance tax? Hardly a left wing policy.

I suspect that it was just written to a deadline.


Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Yes, and Bríd Smyth is on the right of People before Profit.
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False conflation.

Brid Smith is extreme left and always has been. There is nothing remotely right-wing about anyone in People Before Profit.
By contrast, Shatter first became prominent in Fine Gael when it was led by Garrett FitzGerald and has always been closely allied to the FitzGeraldite left/social justice tradition within that party.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
My point is that there is nothing left wing about Alan Shatter or Fine Gael.
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FG have massively increase the size of the State sector, massively increasing welfare and increased the minimum wage and are socially very liberal.

I’d contest that there’s very little right wing about them.
Brendan Burgess said:
Maybe he was a left winger in his youth.
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He’s certainly on the right of the party now.
Brendan Burgess said:
Allowing people to pass on wealth intergenerationally is not a left wing policy.
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I agree, unless you’re a SF or FF supporter.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
My point is that there is nothing left wing about Alan Shatter or Fine Gael.


Maybe he was a left winger in his youth.

Allowing people to pass on wealth intergenerationally is not a left wing policy.
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I would agree that by ant traditional definition, abolishing inheritance tax would not be left wing.

‘Left wing’ in Ireland seems to be different thing altogether though. The supposed lead party of the left in Ireland wants to abolish property taxes for example.

In my (admittedly limited) sampling of people. Views on inheritance tax in Ireland don't really seem to be that correlated with being left or right wing. More so whether you are economically or emotionally inclined in your thinking. I.e. a huge number of supposed left wing people would happily abolish inheritance tax for reasons which are not particularly grounded in any sort of logic.
 
Purple said:
FG have massively increase the size of the State sector, massively increasing welfare and increased the minimum wage and are socially very liberal.
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They also have barely cut any taxes while in government for 14 years.
Purple said:
He’s certainly on the right of the party now.
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He's no longer in Fine Gael. Last April he was “seriously considering” running in June's European elections, as an independent.
 
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