Do we have a low-tax economy?

murphaph

fly_agaric wrote: »

Why didn't you stay there if you hate "socialised medicine" and "socialised transport":) so much?

Indeed. Things may have been alright in New Hampshire but some of the poorest people in the world live in the United States. People do die in the US due to poverty. I don't want to live in a country where people die like that.

Bduffman

IRLConor wrote: »

May I refer you to my previous post #16. The figures there are not just for income tax. They include tax from ALL sources. Ireland is a low tax state.

Now that does not mean the tax is fairly distributed, but on average Irish people do pay less tax than our neighbours.

But HOW it is disrirbuted IS the point. The average worker pays up to 41% and then pays further tax on nearly everything they buy - double taxation. And as for how the govt. spend it - don't get me started. Thats why this was part of the Ahern thread - his govts. bad management of the economy, how tax is collected & how its spent. I don't think there was a need to split this thread at all as the issue of taxation is just another indictment of 'saint bertie'

IRLConor

murphaph wrote: »

Fair enough and I agree with what you say-we do spend money poorly and the core issue here is a lack of value for money, however I believe my point still stands.....irish people want to pay taxes as low as the states but want public services as good as the best in Europe.

I would say that everyone in the world wants to pay as little as possible in tax for the best possible public services (excepting of course those nutters who object to the very notion of public services).

murphaph wrote: »

I think it is generally accepted that it is impossible to deliver that (unless you have a lot of homegrown industry which you can tax at 40% and hope they don't offshore out of a sense of patriotism).

I don't think that it's impossible to have a top-notch health system at the current levels of taxation, after all if other countries can do it then so can we. Certainly lowering the current tax levels would reduce our chances of getting there any time soon, but I don't think we need to increase taxes either. We should tackle the issue of waste first before deciding that we need to levy higher taxes.

There is no way businesses will stay here, indigenous or not, if they are taxed at 40%. Mine would be one of the first out the door. It's nothing to do with patriotism, patriotism doesn't put food on the table or pay the rent.

murphaph wrote: »

Oh, and I wouldn't rely on VHI to do all that much for you should you need it. If you need A&E etc. you'll still have to queue and be seen based on your condition.

In my own experience the VHI has been very valuable. They paid for 6 months of chemotherapy and other treatment in the Mater Private for me. I needed it, they delivered. There was no delay, unlike some horror stories I've heard from the public sector side of things.

As for A&E situations, the only time I've been in an A&E department in the last decade was with my girlfriend. She was having trouble breathing and was treated immediately. It turned out that she had a clot in her lung which was pressing on her heart. From check-in to triage was <10 mins. After triage she was treated immediately and after 4-5 hours of diagnostics in the A&E she was admitted to the Coronary Care Unit where she stayed for almost a week. The standard of care from the start was excellent.

From these experiences and others I've heard from friends and relatives I've come to view the health system(s) like so:

1. Stuff that will kill you now. (Like arriving in A&E unconscious or with major trauma injuries from an accident)
   The public health system deals with this reasonably well. There's plenty of room for improvement, but it works OK. The private sector doesn't appear to cover this at all.
2. Stuff that will kill you later. (Any short-to-medium term fatal illness, cancer being a good example)
   The public health system can treat these just as well as the private one, but since early treatment is critical and they're over capacity you're much better off going private if you have the ability to do so.
3. Long-term illnesses.
   The public system has a mixed record on this, probably because it doesn't have the resources it needs and has done macro-scale triage to prioritise the first two categories above. Private health cover will make a big difference to your quality of life in this category.
4. Non-critical repair work and elective/cosmetic work.
   Both sectors are fine, the private sector will just allow you to not have to wait for as long.

So while VHI won't help for category 1 it is very helpful for the other three. In fact, in category 2 it can be the difference between life and death.

bonkey

murphaph wrote: »

Fair enough and I agree with what you say-we do spend money poorly and the core issue here is a lack of value for money, however I believe my point still stands.....irish people want to pay taxes as low as the states but want public services as good as the best in Europe.

I would disagree. My understanding is that people generally don't begrudge paying extra taxes if they believe that they will see a benefit from it. This means that they should see that their current tax-money is being well-spent and that thare is a short-fall.

If you feel your tax-money is not being well-spent, then it is only natural that you will begrudge paying more as you are being asked to do so because someone else will not (or cannot) fix the problems that are wasting the money you already pay.

Here in Switzerland, I (generally speaking) don't raise an eyebrow when my medical insurance goes up by a few percent, or when rail-prices go up....because in both areas an exemplary service is being offered, and the price-increases are regulated to be (roughly) in line with inflation. If I was in Ireland, and was being asked to pay more for either public transport or medical services, I'd be far less happy...due to the quality and efficiency of service offered.

I think it is generally accepted that it is impossible to deliver that (unless you have a lot of homegrown industry which you can tax at 40% and hope they don't offshore out of a sense of patriotism).

Don't tell the Swiss. If they hear that, their system will collapse overnight. They charge nowhere near 40% and still manage to deliver.

IRLConor

Bduffman wrote: »

But HOW it is disrirbuted IS the point. The average worker pays up to 41% and then pays further tax on nearly everything they buy - double taxation.

The average worker does not pay 41%, it's pretty much impossible to pay that much tax in Ireland. The only way you can is if the portion of your taxable income in the higher band dwarfs the portion of your income in the lower band, at this point you're earning many times the salary of the average worker. Take the average wage statistics, tax them and then calculate the percentage if you don't believe me.

The distribution of taxation could be balanced more towards the upper end of the scale (and I would be in favour of more moves in this direction), but this is hard to do. The people earning huge money typically have the resources to move abroad if they judge the taxes to be too high, so you can't just tax the crap out of them because they'll just leave.

Bduffman wrote: »

And as for how the govt. spend it - don't get me started. Thats why this was part of the Ahern thread - his govts. bad management of the economy, how tax is collected & how its spent.

How tax is spent by the current government - you have full agreement from me over that. It's shockingly badly done.

The_Minister

snyper wrote: »

i dont like the PD's.. bit too far right for my taste..

There is no far-right party in Ireland.

murphaph

Fair enough if they're your experiences. My experiences with VHI have been dreadful with them refusing to pay for 2 elective procedures. But I digress.

I don't agree with you that irish people have the same attitude to taxation and public services as our continental cousins. You will (just for example) never hear of public transport in Germany being treated like a leper in the popular press because it requires public subsidy. It is simply considered part of the social fabric. Here in this country there is resentment by people who don't use public transport that their taxes (a very small proportion!) are used to subsidise public transport and the newspapers constantly play up to this with sensationalist nonsense about how much such and such costs to subsidise a year. For heaven's sake-the Luas actually makes a profit after construction costs are taken out (virtually unheard of in the public transport world but indicative of how starved of quality public transport we are).

We had high income taxes once. We did a good job of reducing the national debt (and I will credit this and previous governments for that) however instead of slashing our income taxes they could have reduced them a lot less and diverted the excess to fund public schemes.

The core issues of waste and innefficiency in the public service should be tackled of course. Germany has fewer civil servants per capita than the UK, despite people assuming it would have more as it is perceived as a more 'socialist' state.

We still have dreadful public services compared to the continentals (and the UK). Your Finland example neglects to mention that their corporation tax is 29%-much higher than ours and Finland has some very large domestic companies (like shipbuilders, steel makers, Nokia) that are apparently happy to remain in Finland and pay these. We don't have very many such high value indigenous industries sadly and even if we did we'd have no guarantess they wouldn't leave for lower taxed shores if we hiked corporation tax. Our biggest companies are........banks and construction companies. These sadly do not export all that much and infact make much of their money from irish people (and in the case of CRH etc. from the exchequer through infrastructural spending) who in turn make theirs from working for foreign companies located here.

The fundamentals of our economy aren't all that great tbh.

murphaph

bonkey wrote: »

Don't tell the Swiss. If they hear that, their system will collapse overnight. They charge nowhere near 40% and still manage to deliver.

What does switzerland do to be so wealthy?

bonkey

murphaph wrote: »

What does switzerland do to be so wealthy?

Technically they're less wealthy than the Irish at present. What does Ireland do?

It doesn't really matter though...I was merely showing that the 'impossible without 40% corporate tax' argument was false.

If you still believe its "widely accepted" to be true, then I think you should consider the difference between what is true and what is accepted to be true.

Alternately, you may wish to consider that it is possible to do without 40% corporate tax as long as you meet other criteria. Then the trick becomes figuring out what those criteria are.

IRLConor

murphaph wrote: »

Fair enough if they're your experiences. My experiences with VHI have been dreadful with them refusing to pay for 2 elective procedures. But I digress.

I'm sorry to hear about that. I hope that, as elective procedures, the VHI didn't put you at any risk health-wise.

murphaph wrote: »

I don't agree with you that irish people have the same attitude to taxation and public services as our continental cousins. You will (just for example) never hear of public transport in Germany being treated like a leper in the popular press because it requires public subsidy. It is simply considered part of the social fabric. Here in this country there is resentment by people who don't use public transport that their taxes (a very small proportion!) are used to subsidise public transport and the newspapers constantly play up to this with sensationalist nonsense about how much such and such costs to subsidise a year. For heaven's sake-the Luas actually makes a profit after construction costs are taken out (virtually unheard of in the public transport world but indicative of how starved of quality public transport we are).

Public transport here definitely needs more care and attention. I don't know how much of it is funding-related and how much is incompetence. It's a pity that it took a private company to provide the service the Luas does, it's a genuinely great service. I don't have a lot of confidence that CIE would be able to provide a similar service having been subjected to the Dublin Bus "service" for so long.

I personally would prefer public transport to be free and funded by everyone rather than putting the balance of the cost onto those of us who use it. Public transport should be like clean drinking water, something that the state just pays for and everyone gets for free. <insert water charges insanity rant here :rolleyes:>

murphaph wrote: »

We had high income taxes once. We did a good job of reducing the national debt (and I will credit this and previous governments for that) however instead of slashing our income taxes they could have reduced them a lot less and diverted the excess to fund public schemes.

The core issues of waste and innefficiency in the public service should be tackled of course. Germany has fewer civil servants per capita than the UK, despite people assuming it would have more as it is perceived as a more 'socialist' state.

We still have dreadful public services compared to the continentals (and the UK). Your Finland example neglects to mention that their corporation tax is 29%-much higher than ours and Finland has some very large domestic companies (like shipbuilders, steel makers, Nokia) that are apparently happy to remain in Finland and pay these. We don't have very many such high value indigenous industries sadly and even if we did we'd have no guarantess they wouldn't leave for lower taxed shores if we hiked corporation tax. Our biggest companies are........banks and construction companies. These sadly do not export all that much and infact make much of their money from irish people (and in the case of CRH etc. from the exchequer through infrastructural spending) who in turn make theirs from working for foreign companies located here.

The fundamentals of our economy aren't all that great tbh.

Their corporation tax is 26% not 29%. It was reduced because it was recognised that it was hurting them more than it was helping them. They don't take in twice the amount of corporation tax than we do. In the last budget we took in €6.3 billion. I can't find figures for Finland's corporation tax but in their last budget they took about €45 billion in total tax and subtracting their income tax, VAT and excise receipts leaves about €10 billion for all other taxes. Even if the balance was entirely made up of corporation tax (it isn't) they're not doing as well out of their corporation tax regime as we are.

We definitely do need to create more exporting companies (I'm doing my best ) if we want to actually grow our economy in the right direction and reduce our dependence on foreign companies based here. Otherwise, one day the EU is going to harmonise the corporation tax rates and we're going to be up the creek without a paddle.

As an explanatory note:
I've been using Finland as an example for two main reasons:

• It's approximately the same size as Ireland (population-wise), independent (of a larger power to their east ) for about as long as we have. Their economy is quite similar in size to ours. The only major difference is that they have public services that work very well and we don't.
• My girlfriend is Finnish and an economist so she can find and translate articles about their economy much more easily than I can.

oscarBravo

IRLConor wrote: »

I personally would prefer public transport to be free and funded by everyone rather than putting the balance of the cost onto those of us who use it. Public transport should be like clean drinking water, something that the state just pays for and everyone gets for free. <insert water charges insanity rant here :rolleyes:>

You obviously have an issue with the "polluter pays" philosophy. I rarely use public transport, and I use orders of magnitude less water than my dairy farming neighbour.

AckwelFoley

The_Minister wrote: »

There is no far-right party in Ireland.

Thats not what i meant.

They are too much right wing for me.

Of all the parties in Ireland, they would be more right of centre than the rest.

We have however plenty of far left.

Sinn Fein, Greens, Socialist party...

AckwelFoley

fly_agaric wrote: »

A "good" (by standards of rest of Europe) public transport system and a "good" (by same standards) public health service != "hardcore socialism" IMO. It's just the way things should be.



Why didn't you stay there if you hate "socialised medicine" and "socialised transport":) so much?

Because, we dont have the loonie left in power here. .. and im glad to be here.

Yea.. China has great public transport.. Magic health syster too...

Im still waiting for somone to point out to me 1 country on the PLANET that has a sucessful Socialist / Communist lead country.

The left wing are great and saying how much better everythinh would be if they were in power..

The one thing they fail to mention IS HOW THEY COULD FUND A SOCIALIST ECONOMY

fly_agaric

snyper wrote: »

Because, we dont have the loonie left in power here. .. and im glad to be here.

Yea.. China has great public transport.. Magic health syster too...

Okay, yes we get your hatred of thw "loonie left" loud and clear but wanting a good public health service and good public transport doesn't make one a "loony leftie" or a "filthy commie" or whatever no matter what GWB, the Yanks, or yourself may think about it...

IRLConor

oscarBravo wrote: »

You obviously have an issue with the "polluter pays" philosophy. I rarely use public transport, and I use orders of magnitude less water than my dairy farming neighbour.

I do support the notion of "polluter pays" but people have to get around and since public transport is the least polluting mechanised transport it doesn't make sense to treat it as "polluting" for the purposes of "polluter pays". Unless of course you're one of the loonies that suggests that everyone cycles everywhere.

If you're willing to accept that free health care and a free education system are required bare minimums for the government to provide then it's utter nonsense to charge people for drinking water. If you're using industrial quantities of water, sure levy some charges but for private dwellings?

murphaph

snyper wrote: »

Because, we dont have the loonie left in power here. .. and im glad to be here.

Yea.. China has great public transport.. Magic health syster too...

Im still waiting for somone to point out to me 1 country on the PLANET that has a sucessful Socialist / Communist lead country.

The left wing are great and saying how much better everythinh would be if they were in power..

The one thing they fail to mention IS HOW THEY COULD FUND A SOCIALIST ECONOMY

Germany is a socialist country and until the reunification or thereabouts it had one of if not the strongest economy and currency in the world for many years. Even when the CDU (Conservatives) were in power they would maintain the socialist policies of the SPD as the country is broadly speaking, socialist in nature. Even today, with its ailing economy it is still the biggest economy in Europe and Germany is still the most productive nation on earth (it regained the title from China who held it for a year or two).

I would much rather be sick, educated, unemployed or otherwise disaffected in Germany than here. In some instances you will live longer there as you will receive better care. It costs €10 per quarter to see your doctor/dentist-a charge which most germans were up in arms with when introduced. I had to go to the doc twice last week and paid €100 just to see him.

They funded it by levying heavy taxes on their indigenous industries (of which they have many) and heavily taxing the individual also. There are problems with the german economy but to be quite honest they are only problems from an out and out capitalist's perspective. Germany has restrictive set of labour laws but look at it from a 50 year old german's perspective. He's worked under these labour laws from the early days of the Wirtschaftswunder and he still saw his country become very wealthy with the best infrastructure in the world and could take 3 holidays a year. Why would he think the worker should now be screwed over despite these very workers building up these german industrial industries from the ashes of WWII to be the economic giants they became-all under a socialist system.

Asking them to abandon socialism in favour of cut-throat capitalism because chinese and indian folks will work for 20c an hour is a big ask. We are in a new era whereby multinational corporations function above the laws of the states the operate in and are in effect bigger than any government. We as individual electorates have no control over them but we should all start buying locally produced goods to support local jobs and tell these multinationals to shove it. They have no loyalty to any nation or region and will move around the globe to lower and lower labour economies. We are slowly surrendering all power to them.

moe_sizlak

murphaph wrote: »

.....and they're CF sufferers live 60% longer than ours. Go figure. It seems many people in Ireland want the tax model of the US but the social services of the Scandinavians. Can't have both in reality. Either you care about your fellow (less fortunate) citizens or you don't. It's all fine until somebody close to you suddenly needs 'the system' to help them.

aside: Ireland has turned into one of the greediest places on earth and I hope all the people who despair at paying a few cents in the euro more tax are the ones who end up needing the health'care' we provide as a nation. Heck, if you're so interested in "each to their own" you'll surely have private cover for every eventuality, right?

Of course this doesn't excuse the horrendous levels of mismanagement of our wealth in recent years.

one of the reasons public services are so much better in scandanavia than they are in ireland is because public servants over there have a sense of duty
here they have a sense of entitlement
if all the surplus staff working in administration here were to be culled from the health service alone , the money saved on paying theese pen pushers could be spent on beds
this of course will never happen while berite( best friend of the unions ) aherne is around

AckwelFoley

Germany is a socialist country

LOL, no .. not the type of leftwing socialism that most ppl on boards are advocating.

Its still a free Market with large Foreign and domestic Multinationals employing thousands

AckwelFoley

one of the reasons public services are so much better in scandanavia than they are in ireland is because public servants over there have a sense of duty

While i feel that Sweden and Norway have the best examples of a successful socilaist type system in the world, it comes at a cost.

Very very high taxes.

Which in Particular, has ruined Danish Agricultural life. Danes cannot inherit small family owned farms, because the taxes are so high its workdsout cheaper to buy it. However as most farmers here will testify to, the value of the farm is way higher than the profits from the business would justify in paying for it.

Hence the farms are sold to big "Factory" farms, killing Danish rural life.

DublinWriter

FF have done a great job on spinning the whole 'low-tax' economy line.

Ireland is a low corporate-tax economy - end of story.

Direct taxation - we have a 41% 'top' tax rate for earnings over 34K. Employers also have to pay 10.75% PRSI on gross earnings for their employees, many of which will also have group or individual health insurance with VHI or the like.

Indirect taxation - VAT, Duty, Road Tax, VRT, Stamp Duty, DIRT...the list goes on.

We do pay a lot of tax in Ireland but get very little 'bang for the buck' due to a complete lack of leadership and vision in our politicians.

moe_sizlak

snyper wrote: »

While i feel that Sweden and Norway have the best examples of a successful socilaist type system in the world, it comes at a cost.

Very very high taxes.

Which in Particular, has ruined Danish Agricultural life. Danes cannot inherit small family owned farms, because the taxes are so high its workdsout cheaper to buy it. However as most farmers here will testify to, the value of the farm is way higher than the profits from the business would justify in paying for it.

Hence the farms are sold to big "Factory" farms, killing Danish rural life.

fair points but what do they have to do with my quote

jmayo

oscarBravo wrote: »

You obviously have an issue with the "polluter pays" philosophy. I rarely use public transport, and I use orders of magnitude less water than my dairy farming neighbour.

Does he use water from same water scheme to give to his herd ?
Do you know how much a single cow drinks in a day ?
Tis a lot
Anyway water shouldn't be an issue in Mayo, not with the amount of rain it makes

Anyway back on topic, we are low direct tax but reasonably high on indirect.
VRT is a huge slush fund for the revenue. Most of the road tax is never usedon actual roads or motoring. Motorists are easy targets and we are copiing the UK with police revenue gathering schemes.

What the administration have done with our increased tax revenue over last 10 years has been atrocious. It has been used to cover over the huge wastages within the public sector.

How will the government/public service manage when the revenue is back to the old levels ?

Speaking of Scandanavia, there appears to be more of a law obiding and civic responsibility ethos than in Ireland, which should go to make their public services actually service orientated.

guinnessdrinker

We have lowish income tax but pay a lot in indirect taxes.

The main problem with paying taxes is that we are not getting "value for money". I think people would not mind paying taxes as much if they felt they were getting better services in return (but at present we are not getting better services in return).

It mainly comes down to bad managment of tax revenue intake imo.

AckwelFoley

moe_sizlak wrote: »

fair points but what do they have to do with my quote

This...

because public servants over there have a sense of duty

Sence of duty my boot! Its the taxation system and the "way of life" is geared towards people not work.

Hence, why i say Sweden and Norway work a socialist system well.

User45701

Sorry. I havent read this topic but its name attracted me to it. I dont understand why this is even being discussed.

It is a very simple No. and you can argue as much as you want i dont care. The answer is simply no, its not open to debate this is simple fact. We are taxed high.

IRLConor

User45701 wrote: »

It is a very simple No. and you can argue as much as you want i dont care. The answer is simply no, its not open to debate this is simple fact. We are taxed high.

Care to provide some hard data to back up your assertion or are you just trolling?

oscarBravo

User45701 wrote: »

Sorry. I havent read this topic but its name attracted me to it. I dont understand why this is even being discussed.

It is a very simple No. and you can argue as much as you want i dont care. The answer is simply no, its not open to debate this is simple fact. We are taxed high.

On the contrary, it is open to debate. If you want to contribute, contribute something useful. If you don't want to contribute, don't bother.

IRLConor, don't accuse people of trolling - read the charter, please.

IRLConor

oscarBravo wrote: »

IRLConor, don't accuse people of trolling - read the charter, please.

Oops. My bad. Sorry.

moe_sizlak

snyper wrote: »

This...



Sence of duty my boot! Its the taxation system and the "way of life" is geared towards people not work.

Hence, why i say Sweden and Norway work a socialist system well.

so you think public servatns in general in scandanavia are just as lazy and inneficent and self serving as they are in ireland

User45701

IRLConor wrote: »

Care to provide some hard data to back up your assertion or are you just trolling?

oscarBravo wrote: »

On the contrary, it is open to debate. If you want to contribute, contribute something useful. If you don't want to contribute, don't bother.

Our government spends too much on what is simply bollox. Pure total crap. Spires, Jets, excessive wages for those in power, nice food and entertainment for prisoners the list goes on and on. Money is spent on total ****e in this country. If the budget was was managed by someone who cared for the fellow members of their species then taxes would not even need to be 10% / 20 %. The rest is wasted on things we don't need.