Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy John Paul Phelan.

I welcome the Minister to this debate and welcome this Bill. I want to use this opportunity to deal with matters relating to tax and Revenue services and the work done by Revenue. I particularly want to refer to the concept of tax transparency. The Minister might remember me introducing the idea of tax transparency in the Dáil in 2012 during Second Stage debate on a Bill on the Government's new reform proposals. We had a three-hour debate at which the Minister and Members from each party spoke and the Bill received all-party support to go to Committee Stage. Unfortunately, due to the backlog, it has not got to that Stage yet.

Two years ago, I put a tax transparency calculator on my website and last year I set up the website, taxtransparency.ie. Tax transparency as a concept and as an acting calculator or tool on a Government website has the support of Revenue, of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and of the Members of Dáil Éireann. It works quite simply and Members could see this today ontaxtransparency.ie. A person can go to the website and calculator and fill out the appropriate fields in regard to salary and income, PAYE status, age and number of children, etc., and it will work out an approximation of the amount of tax the person pays. For example, if a person is earning €40,000 and is a PAYE worker and aged 28, he or she will pay approximately €9,500 in tax. The website then breaks this down into how the Government spends that person's money across each Department or even further, into simple euro and cent.

For example, a 28 year old man earning €40,000 and paying €9,500 in tax would see on the website that approximately €380 of that went to jobseeker's allowance. Is that too much or is it enough? He could then compare that to the €1,800 of his tax that is going to health and consider that in the light of the €1,200 he might already be spending on private health insurance. He would see that €186 of his tax is spent on the Garda and might think this is quite low. He would see how a similar amount, €148, is spent on road maintenance and might consider whether more should be spent on that. He would see that only €11 is spent on the costs of the Oireachtas, that is all of the offices, all of the staff and all Members. Perhaps he would consider that a small amount to pay for the strong democracy we have. He would see that €66 is spent on international co-operation, including on Irish Aid. He might conclude that out of €9,500 in tax, €66 is a small price to pay to help the poorest people in the world. This person would also see that roughly €1,000 of that €9,500 goes to service the national debt. This indicates for us how important it is to close the deficit and reduce the debt burden as quickly as we can.

These figures are important, because they inform citizens in an understandable way how the Government is spending their money. They tell the people what choices the Government is making and that information is empowering. Good governance requires citizens to be informed and empowered. I believe the Government has a responsibility to let people know how it is spending their money. It is their right to know. It is then up to the people to decide and make a judgment as to whether that is right or not. The more informed and involved our citizens, the better the politicians we will have and the better Parliament and Government as a result.

Open government means good government. Therefore, transparency must be at the centre of everything we do. This ties in nicely with the proposals for an independent budgetary oversight office. This is something many of us have sought over a number of years and is something to which the Minister is now committed. This is about getting parliamentarians more involved in the detail of the figures and the choices facing us. In tandem with that, we can get individual citizens involved, informed and debating also. The United Kingdom and the United States do this. In the United States, the tax transparency site is hosted on the White House website. If I was a US citizen - I have tried this - I could enter a fictional amount of tax I might pay and the site would tell me, for example, how much of that money was going towards the nuclear deterrent.

That is incredible stuff, and it is very easy to do. A simple tax transparency calculator could be put up on merrionstreet.ie for less than €1,000 and would take less than two days' work. That is a small amount considering the kind of information it would be giving back to citizens and how it would help us all address the choices that will face us into the future. We should be bringing the majority of people with us regardless of what party is in power. It is important that citizens are engaged, involved and supportive.

The figures are already up on the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform website. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, has put them up. It is very interesting to see, but very complicated, even for people who regularly look at these things, be it on the public accounts committee or elsewhere. We need to be proactive and provide this raw information in an intelligible and accessible form to citizens, very easily and very quickly.

The Minister of State, Deputy Harris, might convey my suggestion to the Minister, Deputy Noonan. We spoke again earlier today about how he might, in his budget day speech, make a simple commitment to tax transparency by Christmas. All it takes is the hosting of this simple calculator, which we already have online. Other people have also done it; publicpolicy.ie has a version. We should put it on merrionstreet.ieand give it to the citizens so they can see how the Government spends their money in euro and cents, allowing them to get involved in the debate themselves.

To clarify, it is a breakdown of income tax, USC and PRSI. The principles of the calculator can be extended to VAT or anything else. The income tax breakdown is a very simple thing to do which could have a big impact. It will not change the world but will empower our citizens and give transparency to what the Government is doing, including everyone in the project that is our democracy. It does not require any legislation. Revenue supports it, as does the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which has already put the information online. The Dáil supported the Bill - although it is not necessary now - when it was up for Committee Stage debate.

I ask that the commitment be made to tax transparency in line with the budgetary oversight office. That office will take a few months and tax transparency will take a few days but we could have it up by Christmas. It would be a positive step.

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