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

I move amendment No. 1:

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.”.

Once upon a time, Fine Gael was for the abolition of the universal social charge, USC, because the party recognised that it was an austerity tax introduced following the economic collapse in 2008. It was a hefty burden and imposition placed on ordinary workers to pay for an economic and financial crisis that was not their fault. The Government has since abandoned, or at least Fine Gael has, the commitment to get rid of the USC. It is something that, justifiably, still provokes much anger among ordinary workers, because they are still paying what is, in effect, an austerity tax. It is our view, therefore, that the USC should go for those earning less than €100,000 annually. We have long held this position.

We do believe that we must pay for these things. We are very financially prudent on the socialist left and we believe that if something is going to cost the State revenue by reducing the tax burden on ordinary workers, then it must be paid for in some other way. We believe it should be paid for by introducing a higher-income social charge on those earning more than €100,000, as well as other measures that we proposed in our alternative budget. These included the introduction of new taxation bands for those earning more than €100,000. This is how the deficiency in lost revenue could be fairly paid for. Earning more than €100,000 is a major privilege. Our view is that people earning this kind of money, and more, should pay a higher tax contribution to alleviate the burden on ordinary workers, who are still suffering as a result of the introduction of the USC. It is even more the case now, obviously, with the cost-of-living crisis people are facing.

I will conclude by remarking on one point that is not directly relevant to this legislation but that is relevant in the round because any tax measure must be related to tax equity and fairness in the tax system. It is interesting to note that income tax receipts amount to €30 billion in revenue, I think. I think it is the biggest tax receipt the Government has. I do not know what total income earnings are because I did not have time to fish out that figure. It is considerably less than, for example, total corporate earnings in any given year, but the tax contribution of the corporations is much less than €30 billion. Income earners pay €30 billion in tax, but the Government is projecting there will be €20 billion in tax revenue from corporations, even though the corporate sector earns much more in gross earnings.

In other words, and to cut a long story short, workers earn less and pay more in tax, whereas corporations earn much more and pay less in tax, overall in the round. This is wrong as well. Often, the beneficiaries of big corporate profits are precisely these high earners who get additional income from what they may derive from having shares in companies and so on and so forth. We are trying to redress the imbalance in this regard by alleviating the tax burden on ordinary workers and replace it with higher taxes on the highest earners, as well as through the introduction of a whole range of other measures that we propose to try to redistribute wealth through the tax system and to close the gap between ordinary workers and the very rich in our society. This is the logic of our proposed amendment and we think this should be examined in a report by the Government.