A new survey has placed Ireland 25th out of 26 European countries examined for the qu

Carb

esperanza wrote:

The government cannot come up with cash just like that, we have to make our contribution, and with one of the lowest taxation rates in Europe, you get what you pay for, don't you?

I honestly thought at this stage that people had stopped believing this myth.

Glenbhoy

I honestly thought at this stage that people had stopped believing this myth.

Carb, I have no love for this administration, but we do have one of the lowest direct tax regimes in Europe and our overall tax burden is also amongst the lowest.
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10003705.shtml

Macy

Does that include fee and charges for public services? They can't be ignored in our regressive tax regime.

Carb

Glenbhoy wrote:

Carb, I have no love for this administration, but we do have one of the lowest direct tax regimes in Europe and our overall tax burden is also amongst the lowest.
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10003705.shtml

TBH, it doesn't matter to me, and probably most other members of the ordinary tax paying community, what our direct tax level is. Yes, our rates are probably low on the face of it, but the fact that a single person starts paying the higher rate of tax at a salary level below the average industrial wage tells a different story. I don't know how it compares with all other countries, but its a long way of the UK's. We also have a high VAT rate, some of the highest excise duties in the EU, I assume the highest levels of VRT, high levels of road tax, and a very high stamp duty level, especially when compared to our house prices.(Some joker in afterhours thinks our VAT rate of 21% is actually low, as it only affects luxury goods). I don't know how many or if all these are included in the study you attached, but our very low CT rate is going to throw the figures out in such a way, that it will look like the ordinary PAYE worker is having it easy. Our GDP figure will also throw the figures out as a huge amount of this is made up by multinationals who take a lot of their profits out of the country. I wonder what our tax burden is when compared to GNP.

Glenbhoy

Carb,
all those figures you refer to are included in the info I linked to. Don't believe everything that FG and Eddie Hobbs tell you - we have an extremely low level of taxation. You refer to the UK, let me assure you that personal taxation is higher than here, and relative to any Euro economy I know our paye workers get it very easy.

Macy,
that's a good point, but which services are you referring to in particular? There are'nt that many govt services left that we have to pay for, or are there?

sceptre

Glenbhoy wrote:

Carb,
all those figures you refer to are included in the info I linked to.

They don't appear to be when I examine what the figures refer to in the small print - it appears to include income taxes, payroll taxes, compulsory social security, consumption taxes (VAT and related taxation), taxes on savings & investments but doesn't appear to include any of the "non-compulsory" taxes/charges such as bin charges, road taxes, TV licences and others of their ilk. For consumption taxes, it states that "the tax base is defined as the final consumption expenditure of households on the economic territory" but prima facie this would appear not to take account of individual charge spikes like the ones I've listed. I may have missed something, feel free to point out where.

(man, is that site advert-laden or what)

ScottishDanny

If you are going to get rid of the foreigners bear in mind there'll be no filipino nurses left in the wards. Some countries have a system where if you train in that country you have to work there for 1-3 years after you graduate (seems fair enough to me) does anything like that happen here?

I agree with the earlier poster with the broken thumb (hope its better) I went to casualty a couple of years back in a Dublin hospital to get crutches after rupturing a cruciate ligament and breaking a bone in my knee. I had seen my GP, got diagnosed, got my pain relief script but I had to be seen by another Doctor before I could be given the crutches. There was a triage system so I waited 14 hours on Valentine's Day to see the doc. When I saw him he handed them over in less than a minute. I would have paid a hundred quid if I could just to get out of there.

I would pay more for a better service, I already have a BUPA scheme through work but it doesn't make much odds.

Carb

Glenbhoy wrote:

Carb,
all those figures you refer to are included in the info I linked to. Don't believe everything that FG and Eddie Hobbs tell you - we have an extremely low level of taxation. You refer to the UK, let me assure you that personal taxation is higher than here, and relative to any Euro economy I know our paye workers get it very easy.

I can assure you that having done the payroll for UK employees, that they do not pay the higher rate of tax until they actually have a decent salary.

I also don't need Eddie Hobbes to tell me that VRT is probably the highest in the EU, that our VAT is rate is high (even compared to the UK), and our excise duties are amongst the higest in the EU, all taxes that most people will encounter at some stage. You say that our PAYE workers have it easy compared to other countries. I can only assume that your still referring to direct taxation. Personally, I don't see what difference it makes whether a person get taxed directly, or gets taxed when they spend their after tax wages. Its still tax. I would love to see the figures in that report if our CT element was adjusted to the EU average. I wonder would it give a different picture.

BTW, I 'm not aginst low CT rates, I just hapen to think the average PAYE worker already pays their share (maybe 1/2% higher if the governent was spending it wisely), and there is probably scope to move CT to 15% if more money is needed.

Glenbhoy

Carb wrote:

I can assure you that having done the payroll for UK employees, that they do not pay the higher rate of tax until they actually have a decent salary.

I also don't need Eddie Hobbes to tell me that VRT is probably the highest in the EU, that our VAT is rate is high (even compared to the UK), and our excise duties are amongst the higest in the EU, all taxes that most people will encounter at some stage. You say that our PAYE workers have it easy compared to other countries. I can only assume that your still referring to direct taxation. Personally, I don't see what difference it makes whether a person get taxed directly, or gets taxed when they spend their after tax wages. Its still tax. I would love to see the figures in that report if our CT element was adjusted to the EU average. I wonder would it give a different picture.

BTW, I 'm not aginst low CT rates, I just hapen to think the average PAYE worker already pays their share (maybe 1/2% higher if the governent was spending it wisely), and there is probably scope to move CT to 15% if more money is needed.

Re UK tax rates: Salary €15K Irish tax 0%, UK tax 14%. Salary €28K Irish tax 14%, UK tax 25%. Salary €43K Irish tax 24%, UK tax 27%. Salary €57K Irish tax 29%, UK tax 27.5%. Salary €70K, Irish tax 31.9%, UK tax 30.6%.
Note, these figures do not take account of reliefs such as mortgage interest relief and transferability of credits/bands between spouses which is allowable in Ireland - where applicable these would make a huge difference to the upper limit figures. Figures sourced from UK and Irish tax calculators as freely available online.
Yeah VRT and excise are high, but these are consumption taxes and we have the free will as to whether or not to incur these. Certainly VRT is a good tax imo.
Re the direct/indirect tax argument, as i mentioned above it gives the person the choice as to how much of that tax to incur by changing their expenditure habits. I would imagine that the majority would be in favour of this rather than having say 35%-50% of our salaries taken off us at source.
As I stated before, I am no fan of our current legislators, but I am a fan of our current taxation system (bar the ridiculous loop holes and tax incentive schemes which have outlived their usefulness), I think it's essentially fair, if not quite progressive enough.

Glenbhoy

They don't appear to be when I examine what the figures refer to in the small print - it appears to include income taxes, payroll taxes, compulsory social security, consumption taxes (VAT and related taxation), taxes on savings & investments but doesn't appear to include any of the "non-compulsory" taxes/charges such as bin charges, road taxes, TV licences and others of their ilk. For consumption taxes, it states that "the tax base is defined as the final consumption expenditure of households on the economic territory" but prima facie this would appear not to take account of individual charge spikes like the ones I've listed. I may have missed something, feel free to point out where.

(man, is that site advert-laden or what)

Indeed there are one or 2 ads on it!
No, it does not include such taxes as bin charges, road taxes, tv licences etc (stealth taxes as the Tories call them), but i never said it did.
It does include VRT, excise duties and VAT though (I can't determine stamp duty, but I'd imagine that it does not).
Re stamp duty, I have no problem with stamp duty per se, it's a tax which the government need to raise revenue. If we have lower direct taxes, revenue must be recouped somewhere, and to be honest if you can pay 1M for a house, then you can afford to pay 900K in taxes on that purchase.
The issue I have with stamp duty is the stupidity of its application eg:
a ftb pays 381,000 and incurs stamp duty of 11K, if forced to pay 1 euro extra he incurs stamp duty of 22k - that makes sense does'nt it. In my opinion any truly modern taxation system eradicates these anomalies around the margins of limits by means of a graduated system of reliefs etc, it's not hard to work out how this can be done, as Prsi used to have similar inbuilt inequities which have now been solved (i believe).

Carb

Glenbhoy wrote:

Re UK tax rates: Salary €15K Irish tax 0%, UK tax 14%. Salary €28K Irish tax 14%, UK tax 25%. Salary €43K Irish tax 24%, UK tax 27%. Salary €57K Irish tax 29%, UK tax 27.5%. Salary €70K, Irish tax 31.9%, UK tax 30.6%.
Note, these figures do not take account of reliefs such as mortgage interest relief and transferability of credits/bands between spouses which is allowable in Ireland - where applicable these would make a huge difference to the upper limit figures..

I stand corrected. The moves by our government over the past number of years to take the low paid out of the tax net means we are more favourable up to about 45K or so. After that the UKs PRSI hammers the higher paid people as there is no upper limit to the PRSI band. There are several credits available in the UK also for various things, but it seems difficult to find actual amounts

Glenbhoy wrote:

Yeah VRT and excise are high, but these are consumption taxes and we have the free will as to whether or not to incur these. Certainly VRT is a good tax imo.
Re the direct/indirect tax argument, as i mentioned above it gives the person the choice as to how much of that tax to incur by changing their expenditure habits.

So the guy on 100k per year can live by spending the same amount of his net wages as the person on 20K per year. ie the well off pays a smaller percentage of their net income to the tax man, than the less well off. I fail to see how this is good. Consumption taxes will always exist, but I don't believe any government should rely on them the way ours does. In fact, the cynic in me suspects they hide behind them while going on about the low tax rates.

As for VRT, I really can't be bothered arguing that one, as I've posted in relation to it on about 2/3 different forums at this stage. They could nearly start up a VRT forum. All I will say is that I've yet to see a good argument to justify it