Somethings been bothering me for a while about our atitude to taxation and tax dodgers in this country, which often occurs to me when browsing this site.
If you post as a landlord, there is an almost deafening cacophony of (excellent) advice to ensure best taxation avoidance measures are taken while fully meeting taxation obligations
If you post as beneficiary in a will, there is great advice on how best to minimise your tax bill, while fully meeting your taxation obligations
If you post as a company owner, you can get great advice on making sure your company are keeping straight with the revenue, and that as a director or sole trader, you are staying within taxation rules
and so on.......
YET
If you post as a person building a new house, or doing renovations, you get many posts such as the following
and no-one bats an eyelid
Why is it that instead of the common myth of "tax being only for the workers", it is generally the middle-income and high-earners in the state that are paying their full whack of tax, and anyone in the building trade has carte-blanch to completely bypass the tax net. And worse thing is that the same people who object to the Taoiseach and other politicians engaging in tax evasion, the very next day, their agreeing cash deals with builders.......
I'm not immune to this, but sometimes I think crikey - the very people not paying tax (e.g. construction workers doing cash-only deals) would be first in line to criticise the health service, state of the roads, etc etc
Am I just having a bad day or does anybody else find this situation odd?
If you post as a landlord, there is an almost deafening cacophony of (excellent) advice to ensure best taxation avoidance measures are taken while fully meeting taxation obligations
If you post as beneficiary in a will, there is great advice on how best to minimise your tax bill, while fully meeting your taxation obligations
If you post as a company owner, you can get great advice on making sure your company are keeping straight with the revenue, and that as a director or sole trader, you are staying within taxation rules
and so on.......
YET
If you post as a person building a new house, or doing renovations, you get many posts such as the following
got a quote yesterday for our three storey house (just under 3,000 sq feet) and a garage (25ft x 33ft) for 13,000 euros (cash).
and no-one bats an eyelid
Why is it that instead of the common myth of "tax being only for the workers", it is generally the middle-income and high-earners in the state that are paying their full whack of tax, and anyone in the building trade has carte-blanch to completely bypass the tax net. And worse thing is that the same people who object to the Taoiseach and other politicians engaging in tax evasion, the very next day, their agreeing cash deals with builders.......
I'm not immune to this, but sometimes I think crikey - the very people not paying tax (e.g. construction workers doing cash-only deals) would be first in line to criticise the health service, state of the roads, etc etc
Am I just having a bad day or does anybody else find this situation odd?