Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Beidh deich nóiméad an duine againn. I fully support my colleague in what he said about the Department of Social Protection and Revenue. People are saying it has to be done online. I do not know whether many Deputies carried back with them the experiences of their clinics and try to apply it in the world of bureaucracy up here. It seems to me there are zealots in the system who think the efficiency of the online system is more important than a person's right to do it the way he or she can and grapple with his or her own affairs. I had a call from my office today saying they could not get social welfare contribution records. What does the Minister of State do when he gets somebody in his office who does not have broadband because he or she lives in the back of the mountain and the Government has not brought broadband there? What about people who do not have a computer and do not know how to work a computer because they are 65, 66 or 67 years of age? That is why they want their records because they are coming up to pension age. We have to set the person up on the system but then we have the information and not them. As the Minister of State knows, despite assurance given to the Ceann Comhairle and letters sent by the Data Protection Commissioner we are still having a fair amount of difficulty getting the system to interact with us on behalf of our constituents. More and more, there are people saying they cannot give us the information because it is confidential even though we got a letter stating that as long as there was reasonable evidence we are acting on behalf of a constituent we should be given the information. The issue has to be dealt with because demanding that people who have no experience of computers do things online has become a new form of terrorism for older people or people who just did not have the skills to learn how to work a computer.

I do not know how many Members have ever tried to fill in a tax form. It is hard enough for people to fill in the PAYE tax form. I mainly deal with constituents whose incomes are in the lower bracket. Many do not have any tax liability but they are still required to make a tax return. Most of these would not just have a PAYE income. Many would have a pension and a small farm. Some would have a small PAYE income of maybe €15,000 or €20,000 and a small farm and they have to make a return. There is a 30 page tax form to fill in for these people to prove they have no liability. There are also crinkly little rules in it. I had a rule when I was a Minister that if they were devising a new form in my Department they should go to some section of the Department that had nothing to do with that form and give it to some official in the other side of the Department and see if he or she could fill it in. It was a fair test. If the official could not fill it in, how could ordinary members of the public fill it in? I guarantee the Minister of State that if he took the Revenue forms and went around to public servants, who, like ourselves, deal with paper every day and asked them to fill in the self-employed form, many would throw their hands up in horror and say they cannot. I know I will be told these people should go to an accountant. They will pay €600 proving they have no tax to pay. In many cases, one might have a farm income in the part of the country I live in of €5,000, €6,000 or €7,000. The gross income might not be more than €8,000. If one has a social welfare payment, it is not subject to USC. If the residual income is under €13,000 it is not subject to USC either. Then there are all the rules on PRSI which are quite complicated. Then one has to move on and calculate the income tax in all of this. It is time we simplified the system for the small people. I do not mind if we have a really complicated system for corporate entities or the big people with big incomes and complex lives with pension funds, hedge funds and every other kind of fund. I deal with ordinary people. Some 80% of the people in this country are on small incomes. We have made a hugely complicated system. When we introduced the USC during the crisis it was supposed to be a temporary tax. I fundamentally disagree with it as I did at that stage even though I was in Government. We had to introduce it to take money in fast. The concept of a three tax system is wrong. The USC can be eliminated quite simply by replacing it with adjustments to income tax and PRSI.

There is no technical difficulty in doing it, but the ordinary person does not have a clue as to what they owe and why they owe it. I bet if we had a question-and-answer session we would find many educated people here, who are doing clinics and everything, but would not be able to answer all the questions either. It would be great fun to have a pub quiz on this with only Deputies allowed in. We would then see how much they know about the low end. We will only talk about people earning under €40,000 and we will see how smart people are at dealing with it.

We were part of this, the present Government is part of it and the system is very keen on it. They hate one-income families and tax them highly. In reality most couples with children at some stage are one-income families. They may not be at the beginning. They might be for three, four, five, seven, ten or 12 years and then they go back working. I accept that most of them work at times or they have a very small subsidiary income. The €1,000 or €1,100 does not compensate for the loss. Even this year it is interesting that with regard to the €750 on the band, the two-income family gets the €750 twice on the band, which divided by five is €150. Yet it is €100 for the one-income family. Therefore the two-income family is again winning.

Two families could be earning €70,000, one with twice €35,000 and the other with one income of €70,000. The Minister of State can out get his pen and paper to calculate the difference of the tax they pay. If it goes to €80,000 it gets much worse. The one income of €80,000 pays much more than the two on €40,000. There are the two PRSI allowances as compared with one. In addition, the one-income family will pay much more USC than the two-income family because the two-income will get the double the amount at 2%, double the amount at 4.5% and so on, and therefore pay much less USC. When the figures are stacked up the difference between two families with the same overall income is staggering. We must remember that most families end up in the one-income phase at some time in their lives.

It also works negatively against people with disabilities. In many families that have a child with a disability, one parent will have to give up work and they are hugely penalised in the tax system.

I think I have one minute left. I would like to have another-----

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