Taoiseach’s Mayo village cycling club hits jackpot with Lottery grant

Tabnabs

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

It's completely wrong for any cycling club to get money like that. No matter what anyone thinks, cycling clubs are in the main made up of people who are reasonably well off, most have good bikes and plenty of cycling gear and I would doubt very very much if anyone in that club was going without.

There are a massive amount of more deserving causes that the money could have been given to like organisations for the less well off, homeless, injured/ill etc etc cycling clubs do not need money like that!

This post made me chuckle, this rural cycling club is in the hapenny place. Welcome to the world of sports grants; where elite private members clubs with annual membership fees in excess of €2,000 can access tax payer funding in multiples of what this little club in Mayo got.

The National YC - € 77,902.00
Howth YC - € 77,000.00
Malahide Yacht Club - € 44,149.00

In fact, private member yacht clubs benefited to the tune of half a million in 2014 (http://afloat.ie/resources/news-update/item/25937-dublin-yacht-clubs-receive-top-payouts-in-500k-grants-to-sailing-clubs)

In the case of the National YC, they bought boats that weren't needed and had to send weekly emails out literally begging members to use the boats.

The whole system is screwed by vested interests. It's a gravy train of never ending tax payers money.

Chuchote

Tabnabs wrote: »

The whole system is screwed by vested interests. It's a gravy train of never ending tax payers money.

Writers and artists laugh bitterly at Lottery funding. Originally, all funding was earmarked for the arts.

terrydel

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Begrudgery is alive and well. More power to them. If the Taoiseach was a member of my club, I'd be hoping it would be beneficial to it.

Are you for ****ing real?
If you actually think this kind of carry on is correct and right, then you need to have a serious word with yourself.

magicbastarder

Tabnabs wrote: »

This post made me chuckle, this rural cycling club is in the hapenny place. Welcome to the world of sports grants; where elite private members clubs with annual membership fees in excess of €2,000 can access tax payer funding in multiples of what this little club in Mayo got.

possibly the same effect - you can hire people to put together a grant application for money for environmental projects. these people know how to put an application together, what wording to use, and how to deal with roadblocks; the sort of information someone running a small volunteer group would take years to find out - and no-one is volunteering them that info.

i suspect a lot of the issue with yacht clubs getting money, yet smaller clubs who are more deserving getting none, is the steep learning curve/access to people who know how to apply for the money.

Tabnabs

magicbastarder wrote: »

i suspect a lot of the issue with yacht clubs getting money, yet smaller clubs who are more deserving getting none, is the steep learning curve/access to people who know how to apply for the money.

And probably nothing to do with the long list of serving and ex ministers, TDs and senior civil servants either members or living locally...

Lumen

Chuchote wrote: »

Writers and artists laugh bitterly at Lottery funding. Originally, all funding was earmarked for the arts.

Those are the same artists that get the first €50k of income tax-free?

Boo hoo!

Chuchote

Lumen wrote: »

Those are the same artists that get the first €50k of income tax-free?

Boo hoo!

These are the same artists whose average income is €15,000.

Boo hoo!

Lumen

Chuchote wrote: »

These are the same artists whose average income is €15,000.

Maybe they should make art that people want to buy rather than attempting to extort money from the rest of us poor saps that have to just shut up and do our jobs.

Moflojo

On a slightly different note - does this grant allocation set a precedent by officially linking cycling to healthcare funding? It would be interesting to see what the club's arguments were behind its application, especially now that the application has been officially accepted on "health" grounds. It could pave the way for more funding for cycling from the Dept. of Health - or it could simply fall between two stools; Health & Transport. The child that nobody wants.

magicbastarder

Lumen wrote: »

Those are the same artists that get the first €50k of income tax-free?

Boo hoo!

to qualify for that tax status - and someone correct me if i am wrong, the situation may have changed - the majority of your income has to come from art. so you have to be making a living already from art before you get the exemption; it does not help the starving artist, who will be paying more proportionally in tax than an established artist.

Chuchote

I suppose what a country does about tax shows where its heart is, and what its values are

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/cerberus-paid-1-900-tax-on-77m-project-eagle-profits-1.2885720

Moflojo

Lumen wrote: »

Those are the same artists that get the first €50k of income tax-free?

Boo hoo!

Chuchote wrote: »

These are the same artists whose average income is €15,000.

Boo hoo!

Ok, this is how this thread is playing out:

terrydel

Chuchote wrote: »

I suppose what a country does about tax shows where its heart is, and what its values are

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/cerberus-paid-1-900-tax-on-77m-project-eagle-profits-1.2885720

Exactly. That crowd are robbing us two ways. Makes me f**king sick.

Chuchote

By the way, the artists' tax exemption is currently set at €40,000.

This exemption is only on the art itself: sales of books you've written or paintings you've painted, not any related work such as readings, for instance. Writers get Public Lending Rights payments if they register for it and you take their book out of the library; the amounts are tiny.

Not sure how many people claim it at the moment; in 2012 it was 55 people in the country, those 55 shockingly robbing the tax coffers of a horrifying €508,200 in total.

terrydel

CramCycle wrote: »

70+ riders in their first year. Not that small. If I was suspicious of anything it's that the RSA supplied their club jersey.

As mentioned above, EK is not even a member. Someone at a meeting had a damn good idea. It worked. The rest is just paper not refusing ink.

Hes an honoary member since last year, not long before the grant arrived.
How very Irish.

Lumen

terrydel wrote: »

Exactly. That crowd are robbing us two ways. Makes me f**king sick.

They're not robbing us, they're taking what our elected representatives are handing them on a plate. Noonan has deliberately engineered the tax system to allow them to avoid paying tax.

Lumen

Chuchote wrote: »

By the way, the artists' tax exemption is currently set at €40,000.

Nope.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/reliefs/artists-exemption.html

For 2015 and subsequent years the first €50,000 per annum of profits or gains earned by writers, composers, visual artists and sculptors from the sale of their work is exempt from income tax in Ireland in certain circumstances. For the years 2011 to 2014 the maximum amount which was exempt was €40,000.

terrydel

Lumen wrote: »

They're not robbing us, they're taking what our elected representatives are handing them on a plate. Noonan has deliberately engineered the tax system to allow them to avoid paying tax.

Semantics. We are being robbed one way or the other.
But in a country where people elect the likes of kenny and Noonan on the basis of ****e like 20k grants for their cycling club, this is what you get.
Right wing, neo liberal me feiners get elected.

Chuchote

Lumen wrote: »

Nope.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/reliefs/artists-exemption.html

Ah, sorry about that, I was looking at the 2014 amounts. Sheer horror! :eek: :P Between these artists outrageously having tax relief to buy patches for their trousers to Apple paying a halfpenny tax on every zillion, sure there's no comparison in the horror! And don't even start about the disgraceful Cycle to Work scheme - giving people bicycles at half price, paid for out of your tax money!

And getting back to cycling-related matters, Copenhagen and the finances of cycling vs driving…

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3046345/how-copenhagen-became-a-cycling-paradise-by-considering-the-full-cost-of-cars

When the city decides on a cycling project, it compares the cost to that of a road for cars, and it includes not only the upfront amount, but also things like the cost of road accidents to society, the impact of car pollution on health, and the cost of carbon emitted to the atmosphere. After including these factors, it comes to a rather startling calculation. One kilometer driven by car costs society about 17 cents (15 euro cents), whereas society gains 18 cents (16 euro cents) for each kilometer cycled, the paper finds. That's because of factors like the health benefits of cycling and the avoided ill-effects of cars.

"What we learn here is that society profits from people cycling. It's better for society if people cycle from many different angles, from resource intensity to people's health," says Gössling, in an interview.

bog master

Chuchote wrote: »

I've heard of roads and even a pier in the west attributed to one politician.

Really???? Did this a few years ago on Lotto Funding Grants

Chuchote

bog master wrote: »

Really???? Did this a few years ago on Lotto Funding Grants

Hmms! Quoting your image:

ford2600

I'm not sure we have enough information to justify outrage; what were criteria for getting grant and did they comply fully? Did a more deserving cause get bumped?

Depending on what grant is actually for spending "tax" money on community based projects which get people involved in society/groups/clubs whatever the group is a pretty proactive way to spend health money.

My local village received lottery money for a community centre (maybe 8-10% of total cost) and it isn't easy to get funding; lots of hoops to jump through, very by the book in my experience. However the benefit to the community at large has been enormous; no more so than decoupling almost every activity on a local level from the pub, local employment, keep fit classes, base for large cycling events, hostel for scouts/hikers, meeting place after local funerals, weekly elderly social gathering etc.

Quite a few of grant awards were in relation to mental health, spending money on community based projects won't do any harm in that area either.

bog master

Chuchote wrote: »

Hmms! Quoting your image:

AApologies, did not know how to post this within the message. But hope you enjoy!

magicbastarder

to be fair, following the resignation of o'donohue, there's a big falloff for kildare - but that happens during the biggest falloff in funds countrywide you can see on the spreadsheet. there are other counties which did proportionally worse.

tomasrojo

I think the tax exemption for artists is reasonable enough (though not the open-ended one that was in place before). Most artists are lucky to have one big hit, which means that in the unlikely event of making big money in one year, they'll get hit with one big tax bill, whereas if their income were to be average out over decades, they'd be liable for very little tax.

The alternative is to allow artists to declare income averaged over years, like farmers do (at least, I think farmers do, based on my reading forms for my own self-employment). That's probably a bit complicated for small-time artists, which most artists are.

A very small minority make very good money all the time, so it wasn't appropriate to have an open-ended exemption.

OleRodrigo

ford2600 wrote: »

I'm not sure we have enough information to justify outrage;

This your first time on the internet ? :pac:

Chuchote

tomasrojo wrote: »

whereas if their income were to be average out over decades, they'd be liable for very little tax.

This used to be the system in the 1950s or so; artists would be assessed on one year and taxed on that basis for the next five years. It didn't work. Artists were often assessed on one great year, and then had to struggle to pay huge bills over the next four years when they were earning zilch.

tomasrojo

Chuchote wrote: »

This used to be the system in the 1950s or so; artists would be assessed on one year and taxed on that basis for the next five years. It didn't work. Artists were often assessed on one great year, and then had to struggle to pay huge bills over the next four years when they were earning zilch.

That's the opposite of averaging though, assessing on one year.

(I'm not advocating averaging, to be clear. It's potentially fair, but it's too complicated for small earners.)

EDIT: actually, maybe they do call that averaging; see below.

CramCycle

Chuchote wrote: »

This used to be the system in the 1950s or so; artists would be assessed on one year and taxed on that basis for the next five years. It didn't work. Artists were often assessed on one great year, and then had to struggle to pay huge bills over the next four years when they were earning zilch.

This was the way for farming when I was young as well. I think you got assessed once every four or five years. This said , if one year was particularly bad you could go in and get reassessed but I never met a farmer who paid more than they had too.

eoineen

First time poster to this thread but you know....

http://workersparty.ie/serious-questions-over-award-to-cycling-club-of-which-taoiseach-is-honorary-member/