Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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138. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide, in tabular form, for each tax credit, the estimated full-year cost of making each of the following tax credits refundable, that is, single person tax credit, married person or civil partner tax credit, widowed person or surviving civil partner tax credit, pay as you earn - employee tax credit, and single person child carer credit. [19676/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that they have not undertaken any exercise to estimate a projected cost of refundable tax credits or the cost to the Exchequer of establishing the necessary administrative system to facilitate the refund of tax credits.

Any such exercise in estimation would be highly complex as it would involve assumptions about the manner in which such a system would operate, its possible effects on individuals not currently in the tax net and how such a system might interact with any social protection payments.

In the absence of a fully designed scheme of refundable tax credits that addresses all of the relevant issues outlined, an estimated cost of refunding the credits referred to by the Deputy is not currently available.