Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Here is a more down-to-earth example. What does the Finance Bill not do? It does not get rid of the special assignee relief programme, SARP. There are still not enough people who know about this. It is really a shocker. I genuinely thank the Minister for giving me the figures and details on it. He sent a paper out on it recently. I do not know what the figure was last year, but the year before that the cost of the special assignee relief programme, a tax relief only available to people who earn more than €70,000 a year, was €42 million. This can be claimed on earnings up to €1 million a year but, even if claimants earn more than that, they still get it. The Minister's figures helpfully show that, for example, 50 people who earn more than €1 million are benefiting from this tax relief. Imagine a tax relief that is only given to those earning the highest incomes, incomes of more than €70,000, 50 of whom earn more than €1 million and a handful of whom earn more than €3 million in a year who get a tax break which includes credits to send their kids to private schools. Come on, that is totally unjustifiable. Yet, we continue it.

We have to start to talk about the redistribution of wealth. We should do this on the grounds of equity, fairness and justice but also in the context of the climate emergency. If we are to learn anything from the Covid emergency, another existential thing that has happened to us in the last year, it is that if we are going to build the capacity we need in our health service and if we are going to have properly ventilated classrooms in schools that are not overcrowded, we are going to need massive investment in all of these key areas of infrastructure and services way beyond what is currently being invested in them or even envisaged in the national development plan. It simply will not happen unless we start to redistribute some of the enormous accumulation of wealth and profits at the top and close down the extraordinary number of loopholes that exist, including SARP for the top executives and the really big loopholes in the area of corporate tax relating to such areas as capital allowances, intragroup transactions, amalgamations and reconstructions, capital allowances brought forward, research and development tax credits, group relief and the knowledge development box. According to the Revenue figures, the tax reliefs that I have mentioned alone cost €17 billion last year. That is a cost of €17 billion to the Exchequer. That is how Revenue described it. Imagine if the corporations had not got all that and we had €17 billion to put into education, health, housing and so on. It would make a big, big difference.

On some specific things that are mentioned in the Finance Bill, I have said why the USC ceiling changes are absolutely miserable and derisory against that background. I do not think the help-to-buy scheme should have been kept in. It is just chasing a market that is out of control. The Minister will say it is helping people to buy but it is helping them to buy houses at grossly inflated prices rather than dealing with the problem of prices that are out of control. It is actually contributing to price rises.

The Minister mentioned the residential zoned lands tax. One of the things that rightly drives people crazy about the housing crisis is the amount of empty property that is sitting around doing nothing. This does not apply to such property. Habitable property is not taxed under this measure at all. Only zoned land is. The rate is only 3%, which is lower than the rate of the vacant site tax, which was 7%. I think it is to cover a wider group of people but that is not a disincentive when you look at the capital appreciation of zoned property that developers can sit on, which is racing ahead. It will not be a disincentive to land hoarding or speculation and it does not cover the issue that really drives people mad, namely, the empty properties sitting around our towns and villages all over the place. We need punitive vacant property taxes.

Regarding the 10% rate of residential stamp duty the Minister has made a change whereby if companies buy more than ten units but agree to lease them within a two-year period, the 10% rate will not be slapped on them. That is another let-off. These vulture funds, cuckoo funds or whatever can buy up an estate, see if they can flog it off at the price that will make them the most profit and, if they cannot manage that, they can knock on the door of the local authority two years later and ask it to lease the properties off them. They will then get a backdated reduction in stamp duty. That is crazy and fairly criminal.

With regard to the extension of the bank levy, it should be extended but why are Ulster Bank and KBC getting off the hook? Is it because a lot of their business is to be transferred to the pillar banks? Is it actually AIB, Permanent TSB and Bank of Ireland that are to get off the hook? Either way, it is a dramatic reduction in the amount of money we are getting from the bank levy when it will be the same customers and business. Two banks have decided to pull out but the business will be the same and less of a levy is going to be imposed on the banking sector.

There are many other things I wanted to ask. I will ask about section 481, which the Minister has mentioned. Despite the changes, which I welcome, that he has brought in on foot of representations that were made to him and issues I brought to him, film producer companies who are getting section 481 relief went to the Workplace Relations Commissions, WRC, last week and said that those who worked on their film productions are not their employees and that they have no responsibility to them. They are doing so regularly, every week. They are still doing this. I wish somebody from the Department or Revenue or somebody else would go to the WRC and say that these companies got section 481, that they are the employer, that they are responsible for these people and that they must stop denying that they are. That is what is happening and something has to be done about it.

Now there is going to be a similar relief for the gaming sector and so on. I am for encouraging the gaming sector and the employment that will come from that, but it has to be tied to strict conditions regarding proper employment rather than what is going on in the film industry. Perhaps the Minister can explain the change to section 481 relief in respect of labour-only services. I am a bit worried about that and I do not know what it means. Perhaps the Minister will explain where that came from, who lobbied for it and what precisely it means. I hope it does not refer to people who are not directly employed but instead are sort of contractors, which is what producers are trying to do. They do not want to take responsibility for employees directly so that they can then write that off as eligible expenditure. There should be nothing, although maybe this is not the case, that incentivises bogus self-employment or not employing people directly in the film industry.

See this speech in context