Dr. Micheál Collins:

This would be helpful to the committee. One of the challenges is that the Revenue Commissioners produce a large amount of information. It would help this committee if it could have what might be accepted as a comprehensive list of discretionary tax expenditures and then get a recurring list from the Department of Finance. One of my other suggestions is to then encourage the Revenue Commissioners to produce their data in a way that aligns to the typology established by the Department of Finance.

In the work we did for the report of the Commission on Taxation, we started with no list and we had to compile a list of all the tax-relieving measures. Within that, we had to disaggregate what we felt was in the baseline and what was discretionary tax expenditure, after which we got to a set of items that we reviewed.

We were very clear in saying, and I would encourage the committee to reflect on this, that if it is the case that a baseline set of tax measures is established, in other words, we take the view that certain measures are there as the norm to facilitate the functioning of the tax system, this is a list we should review. There can be debates and arguments about that as well. However, it would be good to start with a list and then a committee like this one can return to review it in time. That would be a significant step forward.