Is the 41% Exit Tax Soon to be Scrapped? Michael McGrath to Review

[joe sod]

Hang on, theres 20 billion invested by Irish people in ETFs ?
That must be a typo... maybe 20 million.

20 billion it is, but that's a drop in the ocean given that 5 trillion is now invested in irish domiciled funds and 1 trillion of that is ETFs but a miniscule proportion of that is irish investors.
It's an awful pity Michael mcgrath was moved to Europe because he was the only one kicking ass in the government to get this done. Pascal Donohoe is largely indifferent and actually ignorant of the topic given his incorrect response I the Dail to a question on this taxation

 

[GSheehy]

Hold on, where's the €20 billion figure coming from?

It was €703 million by Q3 2019 (last time Central Bank looked at it)

Since ETFs are a relatively new investment instrument for households, growth in holdings of ETFs has not replaced households’ preference for direct holdings of quoted shares or investment funds (Irish households held €6 billion of quoted shares at end of Q3 2019)

 

[Fortune]

Which, to be fair, is true.

Do 'poor' people not have money on bank accounts?

 

[Corola]

Poor people only have money in bank accounts. Having enough spare cash to be looking at investments means you are not poor.

 

[Knuttell]

My gut feeling is any measures they take will be seen as only benefiting the more well off and thus get criticised on Budget day.

The well off who are paying for pretty much everything, the politics of envy.

 

[Protocol]

Poor people only have money in bank accounts. Having enough spare cash to be looking at investments means you are not poor.

My household income is below the mean, but I own some shares and ETFs.

Okay, I'm not in poverty, fair enough.

 

[yellowmoose]

Poor people only have money in bank accounts. Having enough spare cash to be looking at investments means you are not poor.

so should taxation policy be designed only to favour those who live pay cheque to pay cheque?

 

[Corola]

Tax policy should favour poor people, yes. What's the alternative - tax policy that favours wealthy people?

 

[yellowmoose]

I think its valid to have tax policies that achieves any number of different goals. Encouraging the large number of the population that don't spend every penny they earn every month to invest for their own future rather than gift money to the banks sounds like good policy to me and not one that should be binned because there are poor people.

 

[ashambles]

It's trivial to make a scheme less useful for high earners - for example do the standard Revenue copy/paste of the UK's ISA and limit it to some figure like 3000, 6000 p.a (UK ISA is 20,000 p.a).

My guess is the unhelpful suggestion of Minister McGrath(?) in trying to make this an investment in Irish startups wasted the time of everyone involved in the decision making. Especially when they found the EU wouldn't allow it. I'm happier there's no scheme than that dumb idea.