Upcoming budget.

Of course nobody wants to pay more tax but the reality is that public service reform is a long-term gain financially so to get money in the short-term we will need more taxes.

Should also point out that people earning over €75,036 don't pay tax at 56%. Private sector employees earning over €75,036 pay tax at 46% on their income over this figure because they have reached the PRSI ceiling
 
DB74 said:
Where do you think these people are going to go exactly? You think they will walk into a job in England that is just as well paid? Most will have families and other commitments that are not all that easy to just walk away from, not to mention the fact that they will find it tough to sell their houses. This idea that people earning over €75K are all going to up sticks and leave is crazy.
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TarfHead said:
75K is an arbitary figure and by no means a fortune. There are plenty of people earning that level of income who are not mobile. If you go through the households of the middle-class suburbs, you'll find plenty of people in that net. To suggest they will all uproot their family and sell their houses and emigrate to avoid a further reduction in household income, is risible.
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So you think we should screw over the high earners because we can?

And it's not necessarily the 75K to 100K earners you need to worry about moving. Higher earners are undoubtedly more mobile than average and the higher you go, the more mobile they are. Revenue stats (2005 latest available year) show that something like 15% of all tax is paid by fewer than 1% of taxpayers and 40% of all tax was paid by fewer than 5% of tax payers. A lot of the very high earners are here with foreign employers and/or have transferable skills. Any decision to wallop these groups would have to seriously consider the impact of possible moves abroad.
 
A recent quote from Bill Maher could be taken on board:

It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy (expletive deleted).
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Anyway my hope for the upcomming budget is for them to not just make up new taxes, but to take on the whole tax system and make the changes recommended in the last tax review (after all it was done and published with this budget in mind).

A more effective tax system is required, not just adding on new taxes here and there at the whim of the Greens.
 
DB74 said:
Should also point out that people earning over €75,036 don't pay tax at 56%. Private sector employees earning over €75,036 pay tax at 46% on their income over this figure because they have reached the PRSI ceiling
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Should also point out that the 46% figure is also incorrect - you've left out the 6% income levy. So it's 41% tax, 5% health and 6% income levy = 52%.
 
Also, plenty of high earners pay very little tax at all due to various tax-incentive schemes so why shouldn't the PRSI ceiling be abolished, especially when they aren't paying their share of PAYE.

[broken link removed]
 
DB74 said:
Also, plenty of high earners pay very little tax at all due to various tax-incentive schemes so why shouldn't the PRSI ceiling be abolished, especially when they aren't paying their share of PAYE.
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Because plenty of high earners DO pay all the tax they are obliged to pay - which is at least their fair share (how would you define this?) and probably way beyond! So your suggestion is to hammer the compliant high earners to somehow get at the 'dodgers'? - brilliant! And, as mentioned above, there is now a minimum tax rate so none should get away with paying little tax.
 
There would be none of these issues if we had one tax rate across the board and no loopholes. That would be the fairest solution.
 
Someone who avails of a tax-incentive scheme is NOT a "dodger" as you put it.

And for 86 people with earnings between €250K and €500K to be paying less than 10% tax is a disgrace. Do you regard this as their "fair share" or how would you define it?
 
umop3p!sdn said:
From reading this thread it seems many people are eager for tax increases.

Why?

I just can't understand it. We read about shocking waste of money, overpaid x, y and z, bank bailouts, NAMA, expensive blanket guarantees - and yet, people still want to pay more??? WTF.
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What does "WTF " mean?
 
shnaek said:
There would be none of these issues if we had one tax rate across the board and no loopholes. That would be the fairest solution.
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That would be ideal but it's not going to happen. It's too late at this stage to have just one tax rate. Bringing in one tax rate is only going to benefit high-earners no matter what way you look at it.
 
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DB74 said:
Someone who avails of a tax-incentive scheme is NOT a "dodger" as you put it.
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Okay, I'll rephrase the question. So, your suggestion is to hammer the 'non-availing of tax breaks high earners' to somehow get at the high earners who currently pay low tax by availing of tax breaks?
DB74 said:
And for 86 people with earnings between €250K and €500K to be paying less than 10% tax is a disgrace. Do you regard this as their "fair share" or how would you define it?
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The minimum tax initially targetted those earning over 500K - and this has been quite successful (as your article shows). The minimum tax then moved on to target the 250K to 500K earners - the figures you and Joan Burton quoted were before this had started. And, as the article states, there is a long tail on some of the old tax breaks to get used up so it'll be a few years before tax take reaches status quo - but the system as it currently stands has massively reduced scope for tax breaks reducing tax to low levels.
I still don't think 20% is enough for this group, but these would be very mobile people and 20% of a high income is better than 0% of no income which would be a real possibility with this group. I don't think there should be any tax breaks at all - just unescapable tax rates, tiered at reasonable levels. But your suggestion of hammering ALL high earners even more to try to get at low numbers (86?? really?) of low-payers is extremely unfair.
 
orka;Should also point out that the 46% figure is also incorrect - you've left out the 6% income levy. So it's 41% tax, 5% health and 6% income levy = 52%.
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Thats a good point,also those who earn enough to be able to pay this much tax,are surely the ones who are keeping others in jobs by having the income they have.

orka:Revenue stats (2005 latest available year) show that something like 15% of all tax is paid by fewer than 1% of taxpayers and 40% of all tax was paid by fewer than 5% of tax payers.
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Another valid point,those1% of taxpayers end up paying 15% of all tax paid therefore are an necessity to the country in terms of the revenue they contribute.
If they end up paying even more,of course they will get out if they can.

Why study for years and earn the same as someone who doesn't, isn't this a communist way of running a country..
 
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Where did I say they should be hammered?

I don't think anyone should be hammered at all but I don't think anyone should pay less than 20% (PAYE only) of their total income (before reliefs/losses) and I don't think there should be a PRSI ceiling.

That's it!

Also the figure of 86 is from 234 people in that earnings bracket which is over 1/3 of that bracket.
 
I think the new PRSI levy will do people no favours.

The low paid will be brought into the tax system.

I can see socail welfare also being hit.

Why start hitting those on low to medium levels of income?

But the elephant in the room is government spending.

Cutting public spending without reform is a joke as it does nothing to cut down on waste.
 
DB74 said:
Also the figure of 86 is from 234 people in that earnings bracket which is over 1/3 of that bracket.
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Here's a link if you would like to read the source document rather than Labour's interpretation: http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/reports/2010/taxreliefs.pdf

The 234 is the number of people in that earnings bracket (250K to 500K) who were subject to some form of minimum tax restriction (ie the ones identified as paying little or no tax) - so perhaps not hugely surprising that if you start with those paying not much tax, there'll be a reasonable fraction of those who are paying mega-low tax. There are probably at least 5,000 people in that earnings bracket (250K to 500K) who were not identified as needing the application of a minimum tax rate. So you've identified a subset (86) of mega-low payers in a subset (234) of very low payers in a subset (5,000+) of high (but not the highest) earners out of over 1.5M taxpayers. And those 86 won't be able to pay such low rates in the future once the reliefs are used up - so what is your point?
 
I don't think it's fair to say that people want others to pay.
I think most people accept that they are going to take a hit, I know I am accepting that I'll be paying more tax.

I'd like to see people who pay little or no tax, so the lower and higher earners, to contribute a reasonable amount.
Also Pension recipients to take a small cut as they were sheltered in the last budget. Social welfare and benefit packages need to fall to marginally below working rates so as not to disincentivise employment.
But most of all I want the politicians to take decent swinging cuts in their own pay and perks.
 
micheller said:
I'd like to see people who pay little or no tax, so the lower and higher earners, to contribute a reasonable amount.
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Most higher earners (see above) don't 'pay little or no tax'. Most pay lots and lots. But I agree that everyone should pay a reasonable amount.
 
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