Why inheritance is the dirty secret of the middle classes – harder to talk about than sex

The 12.4% effective rate means we collect a lot more corporate tax than if it was a higher value (most of the inflation give aways were funded by this), so that's not a fair thing to say.

You can of course argue that our rate should be higher so that other countries can collect more corporate tax but that will mean more taxes needed in Ireland or lower public spending.

I partially agree with you but our corporate tax returns are so variable that they cannot be relied upon to fund the nation (and will reduce disproportionally if there's a likely global slowdown.) Also, it's only been in the past few years that corporate tax receipts have been exceptional and not even the government thinks this will continue. Either way, my point is that blaming wasters for your taxes being high is an overly simplistic argument.

I never said otherwise. (Although it also applies to Agricultural Relief too)

You may not have understood it, but it is open to you to invest in any business should you so wish and to make it so that the beneficiary satisfies the conditions in order to satisfy the relief. The conditions are easier to satisfy if it is only yourself (and the beneficiary) who work in the "business"

It is your choice as to whether it is worth the hassle to leave it so they can avail of the relief. If you don't have that much to leave, then it might not be worth it for you.

100%.

My Grandparents built our family home. My Grandfather slaved as an engineer on the road and on overseas assignments to pay the mortgage on his work and he died relatively young, such that my parents took over the mortgage at the worst time of the early 80s when they already gave up 60% of every pound they earned before paying the monthly amount. They were asset rich and cash VERY poor and never received a penny in State benefit, other than children's allowance, which was meagre enough.

On top of that, the house is now in the €900 LPT rate, which my surviving mother pays out of a pension and my late father's widow's benefit is also bloody taxed!

And the final insult, when my sibling and I come to inherit the house, we'll be facing a tax bill of about €150,000 on a property that was already taxed about 10 times over! We already pay our own mortgages, so that bill will mean its basically impossible for either of us to take on the family house to live in while having to pay the inheritance tax and so it will be sold and lost to us, with the Government getting six figures for nothing.

Family home inheritance is nothing more than a scam and it should be be reformed to have an inverse indexation with LPT, to reflect the historic tax take and costs on the home.

Government getting €150k for ‘doing nothing’.

You getting c.€650k (after tax) for doing nothing. Can’t imagine too many will be shedding tears for you.

"particularly those new wave republican type longbeards who dress like school teachers and refuse to wear a tie?"

I just snorted some tea out of my nostrils while laughing reading that

🤣🤣🤣

I don't see any of that in the actual figures for tax returns from corporations. Our returns were pretty stable from 2002 to 2008 then dropped massively for 5 years. Returned to growth in 2014 and have then skyrocketed since 2015. Probably because they closed the Dutch Sandwich loophole that year. The returns we were getting from corporations were certainly no higher than other similarly sized economies with higher tax rates up until then, and their returns were far less volatile especially during the recession. They cannot be relied upon, the government knows this which is why they won't reduce income taxes despite bumper receipts. Either way, as you mentioned, corporate tax rates the world over have dropped in recent decades leaving private taxpayers to pick up the slack.

Now, that being said, I have no problem with our corporate tax rate, it just galls me to see the same lazy stereotypes thrown out whenever this topic comes up. No one has any stats for the cost of the welfare class but they get blamed in these threads all the time. The total spending on working age supports + housing in this country is ~€7.7 billion a year. That's about 8% of total spending. Now how much of that spending can be accounted for by the welfare class? Even if it was 50% (and that's highly doubtful) it would be only 4% of our yearly budget. The vast bulk of people's taxes go elsewhere.

I have been - wasn't enough to warrant paying taxes though. We (sibling and I) deicded to sell and paid tax on that (which I have no problem with). But what do you do when one sibling wants to sell and the other doesn't and can't afford the tax? You want to saddle them with a massive loan?

You seem to be making the same mistake as Donald - assuming that everyone who inherits already has hundreds of thousands stashed away. Not always the case

And if they happen to not have €75K each lying around? Then what?

Forced into selling the family home to avoid getting a mortgage?

What does the value of the property have to do with your sympathy levels, other than begrudgery?

What amount would you be ok with them getting? Lemme guess, €350K?

No not free, just proportionate.

Your nice little socialist take on it is sweet and all, but to follow it through to its logical conclusion, are you going to bring the proportionate tax on it down to be in line with the Country outside of Dublin, Cork and Galway, or are you going to bring the rest of the Country up to meet it?

There is absolutely nothing progressive about the current inheritance tax structure.

If there was, my sibling and I would be levied an inheritance tax of 5 to 10% of net value, which would apply across the Country, and instead of having to sell up to fund a stupid level tax bill, we would have the freedom to take on the house and upgrade it for energy efficiency, decor etc, putting lovely money through the hands of contractors and retailers and VAT, before eventually ending up in the exchequer anyway. And then we could sell our own smaller current house and put it back into the market for the generation coming behind.

Do you think both siblings were going to move into the house and live in it?

Leave it empty?

Rent it out to a third party?

Sell it altogether?

Or one buy the other out to live in it?

"Socialist"

Coming from the posters who think that others should pay their contributions for them

So were you goign to both move into the house and live in it together?

You appear to be suggesting that you couldn't afford 75k but that you'd be able to fund a refurbishment with a view to selling it anyway? No sentimentality there. Only pure hard cash