DIRT is a tax on the wealthy, those people who have excess capital which they keep in the form of cash. More particularly it is a tax on the old as they are the ones who have the excess capital, mainly acquired through the capital inflation of their pensions and homes rather than through earned income.
DIRT needs to be adjusted to tax only real gains or at least greatly reduce the rate.
- Thread starter ardmacha
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Thanks for posting this, interesting data. What it seems to show proportionately as doesn't give absolute figures is that Ireland has relatively high savings (proportionately) relatively low investments in shares etc and average or a bit above medium levels of pension investments.View attachment 8026
Households - statistics on financial assets and liabilities - Statistics Explained
EU statistics providing information on the annual stock of financial assets and liabilities held by households in the European Union (EU).ec.europa.eu
View attachment 8028
View attachment 8029
Household financial assets
Financial assets, such as saving depostis, investments in equity, shares and bonds, form an important part of overall wealth of households, and are an important source of revenue, either through the sales of these assets, or as a source of property income (such as interest and dividends).data.oecd.org
However you still need to see the absolute wealth levels from the table I posted earlier and Ireland is on the lower end of that in Europe. Ireland has adult wealth at 250K, Spain is at 230K , France around 280k and the UK 325k . So even if proportionately we have relatively high savings and low share investments we are not wealthy by european standards.
There needs to be pushback against cherry picking data to suit and agenda for more taxation
As I said, the truly wealthy do not keep their wealth in the PTSB. The capital appreciation of your home is of no great use, the house remains the same size and you live in it, it does not justify DIRT. The proper tax on appreciating houses is inheritance tax. DIRT may well affect people near or at retirement, as a very long term investment does not suit. Either way the tax should only be on a real gain and not one less than inflation.
Yes they do. If you own a house worth a million with no mortgage , have a pension well above the average industrial wage and have savings over a hundred thousand then you are truly wealthy. There are tens of thousands of people in that position in this country.
You can choose to sell it and downsize. Either way it’s wealth. It’s up to you what you choose to do with it. In fact it’s unearned wealth so why do you think it should be taxed less than earned wealth?
No, that’s inheritance tax. You don’t pay that.
Should I come tax work the same way? If I warn €250k a year and inflation is 6% should my tax bill be reduced by €12k?
Stupid idea? Yes, I though so.
Not a stupid idea. In the budget the income tax bands are in fact usually adjusted to accommodate inflation so that people do not pay more just because of inflation.
The band increase only affects a small portion of income though, so a very different prospect.
They are way behind inflation because the government barely raised them at all for a decade, they only started playing catch up in last 2 budgets ,we have one of lowest entry levels to the high tax bracket despite the government continuing to pull in vast sums in corporate tax
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