Professor Niamh Moloney:

I thank the Deputy. Again, we appreciate the engagement of the committee with us this evening. I thank the Deputy for his rich observations. I will take them in order as best I can.

The first point the Deputy mentioned was on evidence base. To be sure I was clear on this issue, we will be producing papers as we go along and we will publish all of those at the end. Once our final report is published, we will also publish the different papers that have informed our work. We are keen to take an evidence-based approach and to show colleagues, as well as to everybody affected, how we went about our decision-making.

The Deputy makes a good point about consultations. They are tricky things. On the one hand, we do them to try to engage as many voices as possible, including small businesses, households and individuals. We do this to try to capture as diverse a range of opinions as possible. When one considers that the last time this exercise was done, which was ten or 12 years ago, we did not have these kinds of tools. It was difficult to get wide-ranging public consultations. Digitalisation has made all of this so much more possible. However, I take the Deputy’s point about how to engage with as wide a group of people as possible. On a purely functional level, we are using all different kinds of outreach and different kinds of media.

A point I should mention is that we have all sorts of expertise and experience around the table at the commission. There is a strong, collective commitment to ensure that systems of tax and welfare are fair and equitable to the most vulnerable in society. That is expressly called out in our terms of reference. Additionally, as a group, we are all deeply conscious of the importance of the two systems of tax and welfare and how they interact. That interaction is particularly important for those who are most vulnerable in our society. We are hoping to have as broad an outreach as possible. We as a commission hold that close in our deliberations, as well as in how we approach these different issues. We are conscious of that.

Our engagement with the Deputy is hugely valuable, as is this whole exercise this evening. From my perspective, and I am sure I am speaking on behalf of the commission, this interaction with the committee is extremely valuable. We would be hugely appreciative if Deputies were available to respond to our consultation and, of course, in respect of any bilateral engagement. Were Deputies able to write into the commission, we would be delighted to learn from submissions they and their colleagues may make. We value that greatly.

I take the Deputy’s point about the scale of the issues, as well as the great debate that is necessary about some of these big questions. The Deputy mentioned wealth tax and the link between inequality, the just transition and the huge carbon challenge that we are all facing. He mentioned property tax and site value tax. In some ways, that shows the scale of what we are dealing with. On the one hand, there are huge choices about how one designs a tax system. What bases does one use? Who is taxed, depending on what those bases are? The bases could be income, consumption, or different sources of wealth. Then one devolves right into the seemingly technical but really important questions about how local property tax is designed. How is something like a site value tax designed? How is some other tax designed?

Our job is to stand back and try to make sure the technical design choices fit within a coherent system that supports economic activity, prosperity and employment while also ensuring we are protecting the most vulnerable through the big decisions we make about how the tax and welfare systems work. These are big debates that are happening internationally. Even in recent weeks, the Biden Administration had a very big debate on the role of a wealth tax and how it might be designed. There are big debates in the UK right now. The UK has a commission on wealth taxation. There are big debates on the role of public health and taxation. For our commission, these are big questions but we are in the right place at the right time. There are very big debates internationally – generational debates – on what we owe one another in society and how we express what we owe one another, whether it is through paying our taxes or supporting those who are vulnerable through a welfare system. We very much embraced the opportunity to stand back and have a serious debate on the role of the various taxes and how they support welfare and interact and to examine strategically the technical components of the system. If they are not working together correctly, it feeds back into the overall design of the system.

We very much welcome the engagement of the Deputy and all his colleagues on the committee. By way of making a small footnote, we have already found significantly helpful the committee's 2019 report on the review of tax expenditure, for example. We will very much welcome further engagement by members and thank them in advance for it.