The real scandal here is that the young and low income earners pay very little in tax

atticu

Wanderer78 wrote: »

you need to reword the above then, as it implies its all of your money, but this is not absolutely true

In my example, the €80 for lunch and the €20 for the tip was all my money.
There is no need to reword anything.

Wanderer78

atticu wrote: »

In my example, the €80 for lunch and the €20 for the tip was all my money.
There is no need to reword anything.

apologies, i completely misunderstood your story, whats your point with it though?

suicide_circus

Wanderer78 wrote: »

many welfare recipients would have worked at some stage!

atticu wrote: »

Many, yes, but not all.

In this country our social welfare system makes no distinction between someone who has worked all their lives contributing income tax to society and someone who has never worked.

Wanderer78

suicide_circus wrote: »

In this country our social welfare system makes no distinction between someone who has worked all their lives contributing income tax to society and someone who has never worked.

fair point, i do think workers are continually shafted in this country, the majority of taxation etc has been lumped onto our backs

Geuze

suicide_circus wrote: »

In this country our social welfare system makes no distinction between someone who has worked all their lives contributing income tax to society and someone who has never worked.

+100%

There needs to be a much bigger distinction between social insurance and social assistance.

Fred Cryton

Geuze wrote: »

+100%

There needs to be a much bigger distinction between social insurance and social assistance.

Problem with that is it would just balloon the social welfare budget even more. It's already at €20 billion per year. Those not working would still get 200 a wekk (because good luck trying to cut that), while if you start giving others 500 a week or something, you've just taken away any incentive to take up a job at minimum wage or slightly above.

jester77

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Problem with that is it would just balloon the social welfare budget even more. It's already at €20 billion per year. Those not working would still get 200 a wekk (because good luck trying to cut that), while if you start giving others 500 a week or something, you've just taken away any incentive to take up a job at minimum wage or slightly above.

Limit it to 1 year like in Germany where you have to sell assets and use savings before any further assistance. Would at least get some people moving.

Geuze

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Problem with that is it would just balloon the social welfare budget even more. It's already at €20 billion per year. Those not working would still get 200 a wekk (because good luck trying to cut that), while if you start giving others 500 a week or something, you've just taken away any incentive to take up a job at minimum wage or slightly above.

I see your point.

What about this:

Increase JSB rates, but leave JSA rates alone, no increases, and let inflation slowly erode the real value of JSA

Or else: put a time-limit on JSA, it simply stops altogether after 12 months, and then offer all LT unemployed paid work

Overheal

Wanderer78 wrote: »

fair point, i do think workers are continually shafted in this country, the majority of taxation etc has been lumped onto our backs

So quit your job and go on the take? If that’s how you really feel, but I don’t wager it is. Like, what is your proposed solution, to tax the unemployed? Tax them for what? I’m just not sure where you think it can be lumped. Start taxing baby formula and children’s clothes because they have it too easy?

Taxes don’t just go to supporting welfare it also goes to regulating commerce and negotiating international trade, without which economic activity would be extremely disadvantaged, and thusly your bottom line. Rather the fact that anyone can get a job anywhere between a microchip factory to a chipper is with support of government that has attracted those multinationals and secured those supply chains, maintained the required infrastructure, and kept conditions safe for workers and consumers alike. So while it’s true economic activity is taxed pour a thought out for what economic activity would look like without the programs in place that are funded by those revenues.

RandomViewer

suicide_circus wrote: »

In this country our social welfare system makes no distinction between someone who has worked all their lives contributing income tax to society and someone who has never worked.

It does ,you won't be means tested on JB, you will on JA.

RandomViewer

atticu wrote: »

Can we introduce this for the private sector as well?
That way if a company tries to change over the odds, we can put the owners in jail and the staff would be sacked and assets seized.
Makes sense.

If the tax take doubled the government wouldn't do anything useful with it, do yo remember that the usual suspects who came back to power last week paid full price for 2000 Garda cars in 2007

The Mighty Quinn

RandomViewer wrote: »

It does ,you won't be means tested on JB, you will on JA.

True, but for a short period only to give you the same as the means tested JSA. And I'd hazard a guess that most that apply for JSA don't have much means anyway.

Fred Cryton

phantasmagoria wrote: »

I have sympathy for younger workers and realistically why would they be paying higher taxes when they earn so little? When it comes to healthcare, the public system is not exactly a stellar service. By the time you are seen in some cases your problem may have worsened to such a degree that you are a dead man walking. I'm of the view that more of the middle income earners should be brought into the lower tax bracket, especially if they are renting and effectively giving back half their rental payments to the government in the form of tax. It has gone on far too long...the rich people pay so little tax as a percentage of their incomes given their ability to generate wealth in jobs that are overpaying in the first place.

You could not be more wrong...I've just highlighted in my original post that someone on €20k pays just 4% of their income in tax, while someone on €100k in ireland pays north of 33%. Yet you still want to shift more of the tax burden to higher earners....what is wrong with Irish people?

dwayneshintzy

So Fred, have you figures on the total percentage of someone earning €20k which goes towards taxation and to the state? The amount of VAT they'd pay, motor tax, etc?