Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 9, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following:

“Reports

2. Within 3 months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil, on the cost to the exchequer of abolishing the USC and replacing it with a High Income Social Charge of 10 per cent on all earnings over €90,000.”.

This amendment asks the Dáil to look at the cost of abolishing the universal social charge, USC, and replacing it with a higher income social charge of 10% on all earnings over €90,000. I will also make reference to amendment No. 3 in my comments.

The argument is very simple. We discussed it on Committee Stage but it is still important. I would not underestimate the sense of grievance working people still feel over the imposition of the USC. The Minister knows, but it is worth recalling, that working people in this country took an unprecedented hit for a financial and economic crisis that was not their fault. They had played no hand, act or part in creating it. It was a crisis entirely the responsibility of gambling bankers, gambling property developers and speculators and successive Governments that facilitated a sort of gold rush when it came to making money from property. That had dire consequences for this country and, it is worth saying, globally. That is not just a sort of history lesson because we are on so many different levels still dealing with the consequences of that, both in this country and internationally. The lesson has not been learned about the folly of turning to speculation on property for profit. It is still going on. It is still at the back of our current housing disaster and it crashed the entire global economy. It seems very few lessons were learned.

The point with this amendment is it was working people who took the hit. One of the most egregious hits taken, which people are still suffering, was the imposition of the USC, which resulted in a dramatic increase in the tax burden on ordinary workers. I do not have the figures directly to hand but I think I am roughly correct in saying that prior to the USC, workers were in total paying about €23 billion between them in tax. That jumped to well over €30 billion as a result of the USC and the various austerity measures taken. It is worth pondering those sorts of figures. That was a dramatic increase in the burden of tax imposed on working people. This year, in what is being considered a bumper year for corporation tax receipts, all the corporations in this country will yield €20 billion in corporation tax receipts. The gross profits being recorded by those companies, in the latest available figures, were €193 billion, which is far in excess of what the total aggregate earnings of PAYE workers are. On Committee Stage, I asked the Minister if he had estimates of what corporate profits were for 2022 given that he was able to project a possible €21 billion coming in via corporation tax receipts. Looking at the pattern of all the previous years, that would suggest there was an enormous jump in corporate profits in 2021 or 2022, or both, to allow us to get from a figure of €11 billion being paid in corporation tax in 2020 up to the currently projected €21 billion. Maybe the Minister could enlighten us on that. Either way, the net point is that all the workers in this country combined earn less in gross income than all the corporations earn in gross profits but the workers pay much more tax.

That is fundamentally unfair. A major contributory factor to that unfairness and inequality in who earns the most and pays the most is the universal social charge. That worsened an already iniquitous situation. Although the Government has made some adjustments to the universal social charge over the intervening years, it is still a very significant burden in people's pay cheques every week or month. It should be got rid of and we believe it could be paid for by first introducing the high earner income social charge I mentioned. Before the Minister says the charge we are proposing would not cover the full cost of abolishing the universal social charge, I will just say, as I said on Committee Stage and as we have made clear, that it is not the only measure we would take. We would also introduce new bands of income tax for the highest earners. There would be four bands for those earning in excess of €100,000. Between those two measures, we would cover the cost of abolishing the USC. That is not to mention the many other measures we proposed in our alternative budget, which I have here in front of me and which the Minister acknowledged he does actually read. Fair play to him. It sets out a number of other additional tax measures that would be taken to cover the cost.

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