Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I suggest the downside to doing this is the State will suffer a loss of tax revenue. What SARP allows for at this time is for an upper limit of €0.5 million. For employees who earn up to €0.5 million, 30% of their income can be written off for taxation purposes and the lower limit is €75,000. Currently, the available amount of income is €425,000 but the Government suggests that could increase to €1 million, €1.5 million or €2 million - there is no limit in terms of what portion of one's income can be written off for tax purposes. There would be a loss of tax revenue in regard to this provision. Given the low level take up of SARP, from where is the demand coming? The take up of it has been tiny even though it has been in operation for a number of years and is a hugely generous package covering not only income tax, but flights back to one's mother country and children's private education which can be claimed against one's income tax. Are people earning €1 million saying they need us to be more generous, that allowing them to have 30% of the €425,000 exempted from tax is not enough and that they want us to allow the whole €925,000 to included for this calculation? Is there that type of demand? I suggest there is not, given the low level of uptake of SARP. If there is that demand, I assume it is coming from one or two individuals.

We have a few pages dealing with these amendments in respect of these very highly paid individuals. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, talked about the squeezed middle Ireland yesterday but these people are not squeezed. The Minister is legislating for people who are coming to this State and earning above €0.5 million but no Irish person can avail of this measure. This is a hugely generous package which allows such individuals to write hundreds of thousands of euro off their tax bill. I understand the priorities of the Government are to reward the most wealthy in society. There is clearly a way of doing that. Why is this being done? From where is the demand coming? Why does the Minister of State believe that at a time when there is a massive crisis across the board in certain areas that people who earn above €0.5 million should get more of their tax written off than any other person who earns below that level right down to the level of the minimum wage?