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

I move amendment No. 19:

In page 59, between lines 36 and 37, to insert the following: “Wealth Taxes

21.Within 3 months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil, on the amount of revenue that would be raised if he were to tax the top 5 per cent of households 2 per cent of their accumulated wealth less 1 million for a family home.”.

We are looking for a report on the amount that would be raised if we brought in a wealth tax, as we proposed we should introduce, which would be directed at the highest 5% of income earners. That wealth tax should be set at 2% of their accumulated wealth, less an allowance of €1 million for a family home. In other words, this is a wealth tax that is directed at the very richest and not at family homes. We have long campaigned for such a wealth tax. Our proposal is very similar to that put forward by Oxfam in its report. It is not exactly the same but is very similar to Oxfam's proposal that, like us, has identified the absolutely extraordinary accumulation in net household assets that has taken place over recent years. For example, Oxfam pointed out that there had been a €55 billion increase, if I remember correctly, in the net household assets of some of the richest people - billionaires - in this country over the past year or so and net household assets have now reached more than €1 trillion. That is a net figure that excludes household liabilities.

I made the point earlier in this discussion, or possibly on Second Stage, that the Government does not compile regular figures, which it should, on the distribution of that wealth and those assets in order that we can see how that enormous figure of €1 trillion is distributed across the population. Who has it? Who has all that wealth? When the Department of Finance did some assessment of that in 2018, if I remember correctly, it indicated that the wealthiest 10% of the population have 53% of all that wealth. When we think about it, it is quite extraordinary that the wealthiest 10% between them have, if we extrapolate to today, more than €0.5 trillion in assets. I often hear the Minister say those assets are mostly property but when the value of their family home or principal private residence is excluded, which we have done, and subtract that from the more than €1 trillion, we are still left with an enormous sum for assets, whether these are property or cash and investment assets, which are not the family home. That is what should be targeted.

When we talk about the top 5% of earners, we are talking about a little more than 100,000 households. These are the very wealthiest people. I do not have all the figures in front of me but, roughly speaking, if it is averaged out for that group, it would mean they have approximately €4 million each. It is a lot of money and they could afford to pay 2% on that, in our view. The Oxfam proposal is not dissimilar to ours. A hell of a lot of money could be raised from such a tax. In fact, when people are that wealthy, the value of their assets, whether they are investments, cash or property, would probably appreciate in value way in excess of 2% in any event. These people would not even feel it but it would generate quite a lot of revenue for the State that it could then use for things such as housing, public transport, higher education and all the areas where we need to invest money to provide decent public services, and to address the gap between rich and poor and so on.

It is long overdue that we should have a genuine wealth tax - not a tax on the family home as per the local property tax - on those who have quite extraordinary levels of wealth, often in the form of ownership of multiple properties. In other words, these are properties beyond their family homes, where they generate revenue from renting them out, or just have lots of cash because they are very high income earners, or generate wealth and income from shares and investments and so on. That group of people does exist but there seems no willingness to make them pay a greater share of tax in order to try to narrow the gap between rich and poor and generate badly needed revenues for the State to invest in areas such as housing, health, education and public transport. We think that should be looked into.

I know the Minister will not agree to it and does not agree with the principle but he might agree - because it would be fair and in the interests of having some sort of transparency about the distribution of wealth - that we should, at least every year, show how all that wealth is distributed, which is identified every year in the quarter 1 report from the Central Bank. That report usually shows the figures on net household wealth and that staggering year-on-year increase I mentioned, which has been going up every year. There was only one year when it went down, around 2012, but other than that it has been going up and up. It is a reasonable ask, if the Minister is not willing to support our wealth tax, to at least on an annual basis provide facts and figures on the distribution of that wealth. Who has it? We should see it broken down by the various income-earning deciles so we can at least assess whether a wealth tax would be a reasonable measure to look at. Most of the time we are kind of in the dark about all that. The elephant in the room is the inequality in distribution of the extraordinary wealth that exists in this country. We are one of the richest countries in the world. While the vast majority of people are struggling, a cohort in our society is very rich. Can we at least have the facts on that, if the Minister will not agree to our proposal for a wealth tax?