Contrary to the accepted wisdom, it is not necessarily true that higher levels of personal taxation lead to higher levels of unemployment. Ireland does not have a higher level of unemployment than the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries. Penal personal taxation is not a great concept and it was adopted in Ireland because the law was not being enforced for a long time. As a result, PAYE taxpayers carried the tax burden. It is nonsense to suggest this is an inevitable correlation and it is not supported by economic studies.