Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 530: To ask the Minister for Finance the rate of income tax paid by persons earning in excess of €100,000 per annum and upwards in bands of €20,000 per annum from 2000 for each year to date, distinguishing between single persons and couples, between PAYE taxpayers and those who are self employed and including taxpayers paying zero per cent and taxpayers paying tax at 20 per cent and below. [29483/06]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the most recent basic data on incomes available from which information of the type requested by the Deputy could be derived are in respect of the income tax year 2003.

The information requested is set out in the following tables for the income tax years 2000/01, 2001 "short" year, 2002 and 2003. However, because of the Revenue Commissioners' obligation to observe confidentiality in relation to the taxation affairs of individual taxpayers and small groups of taxpayers, the breakdown by income bands requested by the Deputy is not provided in relation to incomes exceeding €1 million due to the small numbers of income earners with incomes in excess of that level.

The Deputy will be aware that this material is dated in that major changes I made in my Budgets to the structure and extent of tax reliefs will increase the average tax rate for those on higher incomes using such reliefs. Caution should be used in basing policy pronouncements on this data.

NOTES TO TABLES

The 2001 short income tax year was a short transitional tax "year" running from 6 April to 31 December 2001 which preceded the first full calendar tax year 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2002. It should be noted that as PAYE taxpayers were charged to tax on their earnings in the period from 6 April to 31 December 2001 and self-employed taxpayers were assessed to tax for the short "year" on 74% of the profits earned in a 12 month accounting period, the income figures will not be directly comparable with those of earlier or later years.

A married couple who has elected or has been deemed to have elected for joint assessment is counted as one tax unit. Married couples and individuals with income chargeable to tax under both Schedule E and Schedule D have been classified in the attached tables by reference to the Schedule under which the larger amount of income is taxable.

The designation of a tax rate to an income earner in the tables is based on identifying the top tax rate applying to the taxable income of each earner. To arrive at the figure for taxable income, the gross income is reduced by various relevant deductions and allowances such as capital allowances, losses, allowable expenses and retirement annuities. In some cases, these will reduce the taxable income to nil.

Caution is required in comparing between years because data for 2002 and 2003 take account of DIRT paid by taxpayers, whereas the figures for 2000/2001 and the short tax "year" 2001 do not do so. To identify and associate the DIRT paid figures at taxpayer level for the two earlier years could not be achieved without conducting a protracted examination of the Revenue Commissioner's records and amending supporting computer software.

The information on incomes is based on income returns on Revenue records at the time the data were compiled for analytical purposes, representing about 95 per cent of all returns expected.