Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

-----and their wealthy clients, who, seeing no way of avoiding the universal social charge, also deem it an unfair and draconian tax. The media and the financial papers show that the strongest opponents of the universal social charge are the categories of professionals I refer to. The proposals of Sinn Féin are not well thought out. They are responding to the anger felt by people on whom this tax was imposed for the first time. There is unfairness in the tax and it should be subject to review. In seeking to amend it, however, Sinn Féin has taken too general a view of the matter.

Sinn Féin proposes to abolish the universal social charge three months into the year. It proposes to dust down and re-introduce two levies with three quarters of the tax year remaining. Sinn Féin will then introduce a third rate of income tax on incomes over €100,000 to make up some of the loss of the yield from the abolition of the universal social charge. All of this is being done three months into the year and there seems to have been no consideration of the upheaval this would cause, not to mention the cost. It would not just be Revenue and employers that would bear this extra burden; every income earner in the country would have to get a second tax certificate for the year because the tax year would have to be split in two and the tax credits apportioned pro rata. We would be awash with underpayments and overpayments, assessments and reviews, head scratching and hand wringing. Income tax is often decried as being overly complex but if this proposal was adopted, no one would be sure of tax liability for the remainder of the year.

According to Deputy Doherty, Sinn Féin has done all the good work on this but the proposal is to abolish the income levy or the health levy or both without any mention of how the shortfall of €3.6 billion would be collected.

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