Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps land was a bad example, but for virtually everything else people pay capital gains tax.

The international investors who came in here and bought great bargains will be able to walk out of the country without paying any capital gains tax and it is wrong. Other countries do not do this. It has led to a property bubble. I agree with Deputy Boyd Barrett. The opportunity was to move things in the other direction and state we needed a lot of foreign money to come in here, we basically turned Ireland into a tax-free environment for them and now we have a property bubble and we need to pull back on this, but this is not what the amendment does. It copperfastens it and it should be resisted.

I have a specific question on capital gains tax. Let us say a company makes €100 million in capital gains. Normally it would be taxed somewhere between 25% and 33% on this. Now it will be taxed nothing on it. Will those gains at least carry forward for consideration in the withholding tax? Previously, if a company made €100 million it paid, let us say, €30 million in capital gains tax and the €70 million left would have withholding tax applied to it. This is how it is meant to work and we have just taken out the first step. While I was sitting in the Chamber I was sent two legal opinions from two different law firms which have fundamentally different views on this. Lawyers today have different views on how this will work. I ask for clarity on this. If something is sold and someone derives capital gains from it, we know the person will not pay capital gains tax, but when the new IREF withholding tax is paid will the 20% apply just to the trading profits or will it also apply to capital gains profits?

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