Sir, – We learned again over the past week from the CSO’s Survey of Income and Living Standards that the poverty rate continues to reduce, the at risk of poverty rate continues to reduce and the median household disposable income is increasing. Taxes on employment, particularly the very high taxes on higher earners, combine with our welfare system to provide the most redistributive benefits in the EU. A high earner in Ireland grossing €150,000 pays around €6,000 more tax per annum than a worker in Britain or Northern Ireland on the same salary and over €25,000 more tax than a worker in the US.
But Sinn Féin intends to target Ireland’s higher earners even more, private capital is to be taxed and employers will be hit with even higher taxation too. Ireland’s current wealth taxes include gift tax, inheritance tax, local property tax and capital gains tax.
Sinn Féin, People Before Profit and others want to introduce a tax on private capital itself, not just on capital gains, by means of a so-called wealth tax.
Sinn Féin say it can put more taxes on higher earners and on private wealth and that the result will be more money in the State’s coffers. The assumption is that multinational company employees, for example, are willing to stay here when their personal tax credits are reduced or removed.
It is also assumed that those earning over €140,000 will be willing to put up with a new 3 per cent “solidarity tax”.
Is it realistic to assume that economic activity and tax receipts would not be negatively affected by these new left-wing taxes and that one of the most globalised countries in the world, benefitting enormously from high levels of multinational employment, taxation and spending, would not be negatively affected? – Yours, etc,
MARK MOHAN,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.