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So far the word on the street is as i see it at the moment
- No increase in taxes
- Childrens allowence to be reduced/taxed
- Job seekers allowence to be halfed for those up 24
- They will still pay Childrens allowence to children living outside the state whose parent works in the state.
- No christmas bonus return.
- Petrol to be taxed further.
- Public servants pay to be reduced by 7.5%
- TD's & higher public servants to take substantial pay cut
I'd be very surprised if there wasn't another addition to the "levy", or a "normalisation" of the "levy" that results in higher taxes anyway.
There will be tax increases - narrowing of bands, reduced allowances etc. "No new taxes" doesn't mean no tax increases, but there will be non-ringfenced carbon taxesQuote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
Social Welfare will be an across the board cut. Taxing/ means testing is too inefficient.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
They have no choice on the Childrens allowance point, EU laws.
"Carbon Tax"Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
Given the sustained campaign this week by the Government, it's inevitable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
It won't be that substantial - just enough that they can try and portray it as being substantial. I'd actually expect it to be the same bull as the ministerial pensions and long service, where they'll claim they can't do it this Dáil!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
There certainly won't be anything targetting the wealthy, tax exiles or closing avoidance loopholes.
Is this just to be an across the board cut?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
If so it's ridiculous imo. Surely a sliding scale, protecting those on lower incomes and hitting those who can afford it more makes more sense?
I always feel this is a Joe Duffy line. There aren't enough rich people to sort this problem out.Even if we taxed them 80 cent in the euro. Tax exiles are living abroad legally.Quote:
There certainly won't be anything targetting the wealthy, tax exiles or closing avoidance loopholes.
That's where the 'closing avoidance loopholes' comes into it though.
You're spot on. Its populism at its finest. Its now been admitted that the 50% super tax rate in the UK is actually going to be revenue negative, as the highest tax payers are those most able to readily leave the jurisdiction and re-domicile when things move against them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo
Whilst the morality of increasing taxes as income rises is pretty clear (to me anyway), unfortunately it doesn't make financial sense.
As an aside, iirc as it is currently, circa 50% of tax is paid by the top 5% of earners.
Are you going to shut the borders? Stop people visiting?Quote:
Originally Posted by noby
There will always be lower tax destinations willing to take them.
Something like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by OneRedArmy
I'm irritated by people who think there's a simple solution, some reserve of injustice that could be tapped to balance the budget. I saw a guy in the audience of Questions and Answers recently, arguing that we should seize money from developers who made so much during the boom. An economist on the panel rephrased what he'd said as an emergency tax on the wealthy. The man insisted that this wasn't a tax, that he wanted no more taxes. He wouldn't let this go. If you've sympathy for him, look up what the word "tax" means. He'd lost me even before I bothered to consider the implications of doing what he was suggesting - clearly, he had no idea what he was talking about.
It's not an answer to our financial problems, but aside from that, we should absolutely cancel their Irish passports. If they don't want to pay taxes here that's their lookout, but if they're not willing to accept the responsibility of being Irish, then they don't deserve to call themselves Irish.Quote:
Originally Posted by OneRedArmy
Given our status as a corporate tax haven, that might make the list of the top, oh, five or ten thousand most hypocritical things we'd have ever done as a nation.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
Ireland prospers on hypocrisy, and corruption of course. You couldn't have picked a better example than our corporate tax regime, which made us - well, some people anyway, certainly not me - incredibly rich and incredibly vulnerable in one foul swoop.
Agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
The Revenue made one good move (only in the last year?) where they redefined their definition of what a day constitutes for tax residency purposes. Previously, if you were out of the country on the stroke of midnight, you were not resident in Ireland on that day, allowing you to exclude it from the 169 (something like that anyway?) day residency requirement. Apparently for a period you had a queue of private jets on the runway at Dublin Airport every night at 11.45, which took off, took a spin into international airspace, and returned at 12.05.
Now I believe the definition has been changed to count it as a tax day if you are in the country at any point during the day.
A bit like the drink driving stuff, its a combination of poor rules and I would argue, worse enforcement, that leads to situations like this.
Taxing the wealthy, hitting tax exiles for some of their just deserts and closing loopholes may not bring in a hell of a lot of revenue. However, if you're going to hit social welfare recipients with cuts, cut pay of workers, and increase the tax burden on lower income tax payers, the wealthy have to be seen to also take their fair share of the hit. Afterall, they're the ones that were on the pigs back during the boom and bubble (where the pay gap widened).
For all the garbage that lenihan, and the media (who just happen to be controlled by tax exiles) come out with about the amount the wealthy contribute, there marginal rate doesn't compare with the PAYE worker. The x number of tax payers who don't pay any tax includes millionaires and billionaires who (legitimately) avoid tax.
Or are the usual suspects on this thread suggesting that only social welfare recipients, PAYE workers, and public servants should pay the price, whilst the wealthy walk away as they were?
As opposed to the attack on the public service?Quote:
Originally Posted by OneRedArmy
You take action that, through the least amount of pain, balances the budget.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
If introducing a punitive tax rate on higher earnings is revenue negative, then whilst it might make us feel better from a moral standpoint, the actual effect would be to increase the size of the cuts made elsewhere. Unless it can be proved taxing the ultrawealthy more would be effective for revenue, then its simply a smokescreen (or as someone said last week "Joe Duffy politics").
It then comes down to how much of the burden the public vs private sector PAYE worker respectively shares. It has been stated that we need to roll back our standard of living to 2003 levels in order to reduce the budget deficit. If we look at the change in earnings since then, it is clear as day that the public sector has significantly more than the private sector in that time period, mostly because many of the advances made by the private sector have been eroded in the last 18 months. In comparison, public sector pay, despite a hiring ban and the pensions levy, continues to rise. This might be unfair, but its totally unsustainable.
So in rolling back standards of living to 2003 levels, its the public sector that has to bear the brunt of the cuts, as the private sector has already undergone huge adjustments.
The unions have recognised this, as they have changed tack in the last fortnight and are now attacking the timeframe for reducing the budget deficit, which is completely self-serving and reckless IMO.
The duplicity is staggering. When selective use of the ESRI data was driving benchmarking awards a few years ago the unions weren't complaining about its accuracy, now the ESRI are a puppet of special business interests and the output completely unreliable :rolleyes:
Its also conveniently forgotten that one of the key reasons that cuts in public sector spending automatically becomes a wage cutting issue is that the public sector is significantly more resistant to changes in working practice than most of the private sector. This is also the reason that the good, honest workers in the public sector, of which there are a huge amount, get tarred with the "jobsworth" label, which is completely unfair. The tolerance of completely outdated and anachronistic working practices, sidebar agreements and generally inefficient working processes reduces productivity and provides both a hiding place and a safety blanket for poor performers, at the expense of honest, hard working staff (of whatever rank).
And here's the clincher, its the unions protection of these outdated working practices and by extension, the protection of the lazy jobsworths that result in across the board paycuts which by their nature will always be unfair.
These are my own views, formed through over 10 years experience working with various state, semi-state and public departments and bodies.
In a decent society, you do both.
You're in a forum ORA, not the Dail. The hardline stance doesn't really achieve anything in here. :)
The quality of discussion on here is much better than the Dail.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
Less people get thrown out of foot.ie for poor behaviour for a start :D
And no one's pandering to the media or their constituents.
In Ireland, we have people that want to be Irish, but don't want to pay any taxes.
In Germany, some wealthy citizens want to pay more.
adam
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...255444270.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
They shouldn't have been excluded in the first place. Renumeration wasn't being reduced, they were being taxed more, just like everyone else. Gov.ie just didn't have the balls (or interest) to implement it.
Irrelevant. They didn't have to pay it (rightly or wrongly). They did anyway. That counts as rich people offering to pay more tax in my book.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
I don't think I'd be able to read your book John83, it sounds awful. :)
By my reading, half of them were shamed into it, and the rest are just shameless.
That's fair. I don't know that I'd have been too eager to hand over money I didn't have to in their place though.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
I think I would if I could afford it, and if I couldn't afford it then I'd need to look at how I was living. Judges earn plenty.
However it should never have cropped up in the first place, as I said earlier.
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...e-1940232.htmlQuote:
TAOISEACH Brian Cowen will next week call the bluff of Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore by directly challenging them to detail how they would cut €4bn to salvage the public finances.
The Fine Gael and Labour leaders have so far refused to say where they would find the money to stave off the social welfare cuts being planned by the Government.
The mantra seems to be yes we need cuts , but someone else has to take the hit. More taxes seems to be the oppositions solution.:mad:
If they've any sense they'll come back with "let us see all the books and projections", which the Government won't do (and haven't in the past when they've been asked). Same as Lenihan earlier in the year, FF want it as a one sided act of good faith - party interest ahead of national interest.
Labour and FG normally publish alternative proposals anyway - Labour certainly did in April. Nice to see INM still see which side their bread is buttered on if they deem that worthy of the main headline.
Fergus Finlay has an excellent article on Public Service pay cuts in the Examiner:
Read more: http://www.examiner.ie/opinion/colum...nt-105725.htmlQuote:
THINK if I were a public servant today, I’d be mad as hell.
With a few well documented political exceptions, I’ve never known anyone who went into the public service to make money.
In fact if you wanted to make money, the last place you’d go for a career is into the public service.
Some people choose a public service career for security and many choose it because it offers the chance to do something or to be something they’ve always wanted to be. A nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a fireman. To work at healing the sick, catching the baddies, teaching the kids — I’ve known people who grew up from childhood wanting to do just that, and who have found tremendous fulfilment from following a chosen career as a public servant.
Surely if people didn't go into the public sector for the money the cuts shouldn't bother them?
I'm still trying to get my head around striking at the mere concept of cuts even before the details are announced. To me, that shows a fairly clear statement that its about the money.
I don't agree with what you've quoted there. The public sector spent the last decade with their hands out, even striking for pay increases (teachers, nurses, junior doctors (or was that only for better hours - though with their hours cut, they now want compensation for lost overtime pay), gardaí (technically 11 years ago)), and pushing hard to have their pay benchmarked against the private sector. Now, when the private sector is seeing massive pay reductions and layoffs, they're fighting to hold what they have. They want it both ways, and a 'they just want to heal the sick and teach children' soft focus doesn't ring true any more, if it ever did.
I don't think I know anyone that wouldn't be bothered by a pay cut, at any level of society.
Just because you are doing a job you know, and have always known, will never make you really rich, you are not entitled to be worried about salary cuts?Quote:
Originally Posted by OneRedArmy
If the Gardai are so eager to serve, why are an unprecedented number taking early retirement this year? Anything to do with the fear that their ridiculous "best three years earnings" pensions calculation is on the chopping board?
People don't like getting things taken away from them. Clearly the solution was not to pay unaffordable increases over the last decade to a cohort where the increases can't easily be taken back.
I believe Adam's prediction of widespread unrest/winter of discontent is at least 50-50 at this stage. The unions can't back down, they'll be signing their death warrant.
I'm not sure what "rich" means? The average public sector worker is richer than the private sector worker in many cases, as demonstrated by lots of studies.Quote:
Originally Posted by osarusan
I've deleted the personal stuff from osarusan's comment, and ORA's reply.
osarusan, if you can't comment without the personal stuff, don't comment. ORA, you're entitled to your opinion but at this stage your cynicism is bordering on trolling. Knock it on the head please, or find somewhere else to post it.
Back on topic.
Is this aimed at me, Adam? I'm assuming so because of it immediately following my post.Quote:
Originally Posted by dahamsta
I'm not saying that they are or should be happy to cut their pay. I'm just saying that I dislike happy clappy newspaper comment columns portraying them as poor, underprivileged, saintly victims being picked on by the government.
No. Read the post before yours.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
You would have to agree that these articles are drowned out in the media by far more anti public service than pro public service. Regardless of your view on these issues, the media coverage has been very biased against the unions and public service and to be honest, the media in general are nearly always anti union. Finlay and O Toole are the only 2 articles I have read that are in support of the public sectory unions. Obviosly this is disgarding, any socialist papers or sinn fein papers etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
Spot on Neil. Indo being particularly agressive in thier "reporting"
I can't say I pay enough attention to 'news' commentary these days to establish whether there's a bias Neil. Most of them are unbalanced dreck.
Morning Ireland this morning discredited a survey on private sector pay rises because it was based on averages, after leading on every survey on Private v Public sector pay based on averages. Average pay comparisons aren't valid, but it was an amazing turnaround of opinion from previous reports now it didn't suit their agenda. Lawlor point blank refused to let the IMPACT guy make his point on it and come back after her discrediting it.
There's very little balance in the media - RTE tows the Government line, Newstalk and Today FM controlled by O'Brien, and the Indo controlled by O'Reilly (even if you ignore that organisations history). The best of a bias lot is the Times print wise, Brawn on TV3 isn't bad (when he doesn't get distracted by the minutia, and it's more his opinion driven rather than balanced)