What is the squeezed middle?

But...but...if you want the extra income, you have to work for it.
Clearly some do, clearly some dont. Clearly some people will take the extra income, with the hardwork, regardless of the tax.

That's my point. The more you tax the higher paid, the less likely it is that someone will strive to earn higher incomes given the amount of effort involved! Take it to its exteme....if you were taxes at 100% on everything over 70k, nobody would bother to seek to earn 70,0001 as that (and every additional) euro would be taken from them.
 
Yes, and as has been pointed out, the top 20% of earners, earn between some 50% of all income earned in the State.
By no stretch of the imagination could it be argued that people are not willing to go out and earn this money. Far from it, the evidence strongly suggests that regardless of our current tax rates, people will be bothered to take the higher earnings along with the tax rather than not take them.
 

My bad, when talking about profits I meant after-tax profits.
Yes, I do think there is scope to increase taxes on corporations. Dont you? Even by 1-2%?
Or do you think corporation tax is too high?
 
That is an important point, especially with talk of college fees being re-introduced. Add in a student loan of €20-30,000 and the pay off gets smaller and smaller. For my parents generation everyone was in the same boat, but for my generation I genuinely cannot see a big difference between many educated to masters level and those who left school early ( with 10 years more wages. 10 years more savings, 10 years of cheap holidays in May when everyone else was stressed out studying, 10 years into their mortgage, grants for their college age children, shorter commutes to more local jobs etc) I'm sure it will all even out when we hit our late 50s and 6 years in college plus night courses etc will pay off but I'm not sure I'd be pushing my children to get a loan to head down that path.
 
But...but...if you want the extra income, you have to work for it.
Clearly some do, clearly some dont. Clearly some people will take the extra income, with the hardwork, regardless of the tax.
No, some can just go on strike, Have my pension increased, have my welfare increased... but only if someone else is willing to go out and work harder just to see over half of the fruits of their hard work taken from them and given to "some".
 
I see your point bigshort and I think you are probably right. But going to college, working hard and putting in the extra hours was somewhat automatic for me and my group of friends. And was encouraged by our parents. But with hindsight, I wouldn't be pushing the next generation in that direction automatically
 
Biased generalisations based on your opinion and plain old fashioned begrudgery.
If someone starts a business it belongs to them. They get to reap the benefits of the business's activities. If it's publicly owned the person or people in charge are answerable to the shareholders. We have seen multiple examples of investment companies challenging the remuneration of the directors/managers.
 
I will be suggesting that my kids emigrate if they are smart enough and work hard enough to put themselves in a position to earn good money. I have two friends whose children have all left well paying jobs in Ireland to move to Seattle (14% income tax with sales tax deductible from that income tax) and the UK.
If I was younger I'd also leave. This is no country for people who want to work hard.
 
I agree Purple. My eldest finished college this year and is now working in the US for probably twice the gross he would get in Ireland - and with much lower tax and a society that encourages and values high earners. I hope my younger two follow. I would like to be like my parents with all my children nearby as a I grow older but it's more important that they are happy, successful and valued by the society they live in - so I'm delighted for my eldest.
 
My bad, when talking about profits I meant after-tax profits.
Yes, I do think there is scope to increase taxes on corporations. Dont you? Even by 1-2%?
Or do you think corporation tax is too high?
I think we need to compete with other countries on taxation, just as we need to compete on wage costs and everything else. I know that we are a small open economy and these things matter more here than most other countries. If we can raise corporation tax and remain competitive then fine, do it. It shouldn't be an ideological decision though.

I am utterly amazed that the people who are at the forefront of calls for better services never highlight the billions of Euro of waste of tax payers money by the State. Instead their solution is to give them even more money to waste. Why do they ignore this? Is it because their concern is just to mask their jealousy of those who are more successful than them?
 
My eldest finished college this year and is now working in the US for probably twice the gross he would get in Ireland - and with much lower tax and a society that encourages and values high earners.

Im no expert on American corporation tax, but isnt one of the reasons Apple et al locate here because our CT is far more attractive than CT in the US?
If it is, isnt it probably the case that personal income taxes are lower in the US?
In otherwords, perhaps the US has a more broad based equitable system than Irelands?
If you want a fair tax system in Ireland, CT is an obvious focal point, not someone on minimum wage.
 

Its not an ideological position. Its a practical position. If incomes are taxed to high here, then they need to be sourced elsewhere. CT is an obvious focal point to start with, not the income of other earners on the basis of how little they earn, and by default, how little income tax they pay.
 
You say that like it's a bad thing.

Not at all, its really a meaningless statistic. The only plausible thing to gauge from it is that there are people in this country prepared to work for high earnings, relative to other earnings.
 

Apple employ 60,000 people in the US; and 6,000 here. The corporation tax liabilities they declare reflect that.
There's no realistic way Ireland could support 60,000 Apple jobs, from a small island of 5 million people; versus Silicon Valley.
 
For me, the issue is fairness within the income tax system, not the absolute contribution income tax makes to the overall tax take. Even if CT increased such that overall income tax could reduce and the marginal tax rate became 40%, I would still consider it unfair that low income earners paid relatively much lower tax than every country in the world. Even in the 'low income tax' US, low earners pay way more tax than in Ireland. On 18K, in the US taxes are 2,300 vs. 600 in Ireland (4,800 in Germany and 3,200 in Sweden). At 36K income, Ireland is about the same as the US (Ireland 6,900, US 6,300 Germany 13K, Sweden 8K). Above that, the US is indeed low income tax.
I still haven't seen any explanation of why the structure of Ireland's income tax is so skewed compared to other countries. As I said, even if the absolute tax take from income tax could be lowered as a result of increased CT, why is it so skewed such that higher earners pay massively more in Ireland vs lower earners? I don't think it's fair. I think it's fair that higher earners pay higher rates, just not as skewed as in Ireland (all alone in the entire world with such skewness).

The big difference between Ireland and most other countries is that social contributions are much higher outside Ireland and there is a cap. If I ruled the world (Ireland anyway), that's the one thing I would change about the Irish income tax system - higher PRSI (no/very low income exemptions) with a cap. Income tax rates would fall to keep the marginal rate the same.
 

I think it's years of conditioning by our left wing media

Received wisdom is

High public spending = good

Low taxation = bad