What taxes levied on people rather than on companies or special interest groups e.g. Racehorse owners/greyhound owners in Ireland aren’t set high?
VAT is at 23%.
Income tax and employment taxes once you start earning a moderate wage are over 50%
CGT is 33%
Inheitance tax is high and the threshold of 225k seems very low.
water charges are higher than in most of Europe.
Alcohol and Tobacco (not that I consume much/any of either) is high.
Motor taxes are high.
Nice big levy on insurance policies.
What exactly is cheap or perhaps what will be the next target for additional taxation.
Taxes on low incomes are low by European/OECD standards but that is offset by the high VAT rate. Also low are taxes on very high incomes: the income tax rates are quite progressive but only up to a relatively low ceiling. Then they flatline more or less. In other jurisdictions, the progressivity continues.
The other taxes that are low are the ones you’re not interested in talking about, particularly employer social charges, corporation tax, etc.
In what other jurisdictions do you get to 50+% at such a low threshold?
P.S. Not mentioned yet – DIRT, 41% + “PRSI” (in quotes because whereas normal PRSI doesn’t insure you for anything much, this one doesn’t insure you for anything at all).
I’m not interested in talking about them because they aren’t paid by Joe Public. Is there anything where the Government intentionally goes easy on the average tax payer compared to in other european countries?
I suppose you could say that items such as low 3rd level fees, a lot lower than in many countries such as the UK, compensates for some of the tax burden here, even if not a benefit to all.
And we have low State taxes at 0%, compared to some Federal countries, like Germany for example.
Is not the guy who owns the local corner shop joe public? If so he pays 10.25 per cent employers PRSI compared to 30 per cent in lots of continental European countries. Now that is a low tax regime.
The reason I ask is because I’ve made a modest capital gain on some shares I own. I emphazise “modest”; not enough to make major life decisions about. GCT taxation rates in Ireland are punitive. Someone making a modest gain and who aren’t rooted to the Country could skip across to the Isle of Man or one of the mainland europe countries which don’t levy CGT and live a modest but peaceful life for a year on the tax they would otherwise have had to pay in Ireland.
Now the D O’Bs of this world may have had tens of millions of reasons to skip the Country but when taxation is so penal that it because a proposition for Joe Public then something is wrong and something is wrong because a lot of people are storing their capital gains in their PPR because it is free from CGT(obviously not the only reason andfor most not even the primary reason to own a nice home).
I know someone with a convenience store and they rent it to themselves to maximise their tax benefits. I suppose “Joe Public” would need to be classified as an employee with no wiggle room with regard to how they receive their income.
I don’t know. That might be something worth changing. But it has nothing to do with my point about the progressivity flatlining somewhere between €85K and €100K.
do you actually want it to be higher for those on those higher wages? Anyone with an internationally tradable skill like a Doctor or Engineer or Software Developer would be polishing up their linkedin profile if this were to happen.
I don’t disagree with progressivity but at a certain stage you are hitting the top of the laffer curve.
I suppose we could all move to the Isle of Man if they could take us. But if truth be told most of us look at the big picture of friends, family and community, the plusses and minuses of living here rather than becoming tax exiles. And perhaps other people may see this as enertia or stupidity.
I’m not seeing much community in Ireland but on the points of friends and family; they are your anchor to where you come from and hold you captive allowing the regime to tax you to within an inch of your life. Your sentiment for the place is what the regime exploits and as long as the considerable minuses(which include excessive taxation) don’t outweigh the pluses and a weighting for inertia they can continue to garnish your wage packet and pilfer your pocket.
If only someone could form a mathmatical equation for determining if you stay or go.
I’m coming to the conclusion that at some point in time the regime will figure out that they don’t need troublesome citizens as long as they retain access to the natural resources of the country and membership of desirable trading blocks which outsiders are willing to pay a charge to benefit from and then all labour can be provided by sharecropper migrants with no rights to anything and the troublesome local citizens can f*ck off out of the country.
Property taxes here are very low. The UK average is 1196 Stg per property, Portugal is 0.2->0.8% of the property value, Denmark is 1-> 3% , US is 0-4% (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax).
Personally I think CGT is low and favours high earners who take their income as dividends rather than income. I would prefer to see capital gains treated as income. T
There are also people who are ‘resident’ abroad who basically live here, send their kids to school here and jet in and out as they please, there are no checks on how many days they spend here.
In general wealth taxes in Ireland are very low, encouraging the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and making it difficult for new businesses to compete against inherited businesses. Many of these taxes are avoidable if you are prepared to throw enough resources at the process - meaning that you have to be avoiding a lot of tax to make it worthwhile - again favouring the wealthy.
What does the 30%+ contribution get you in other countries? My employment resulted in a five figure sum of PRSI going to the government last year (between employee and employer contributions, the first figure wasn’t a 1 either). For that I was entitled to a dental exam and half an eye exam. If I became unemployed the max amount I’d receive without being means tested wouldn’t put a dent in that figure for a single year
I believe the Laffer Curve was definitively discredited when Reagan used it to justify tax cuts on the wealthy with the claim that tax revenue would increase. He then ran enormous deficits for the rest of his presidency.
