Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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169. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated revenue that would be raised from reducing the standard fund threshold from €2 million to €1.7 million, €1.5 million and €1.3 million, respectively. [21196/18]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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172. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated revenue that would be raised from reducing the standard fund threshold from €2 million to €1.65 million. [21199/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 169 and 172 together.

The Standard Fund Threshold (SFT) is the maximum allowable pension fund on retirement for tax purposes which was introduced in Budget and Finance Act 2006 to prevent over-funding of pensions through tax-relieved arrangements. The threshold was initially set at €5 million, which was subsequently reduced to €2.3 million in 2010 and further reduced in Budget 2014 and Finance (No 2) Act 2013 to €2 million with effect from 1 January 2014.

Information on the numbers and values of individual pension funds or on individual accrued benefits in pension schemes are not generally required to be supplied to either the Revenue Commissioners or to my Department by the administrators of pension schemes and personal pension arrangements. The estimate of the yield expected to arise from the changes to the SFT regime introduced in Budget 2014 and Finance (No 2) Act 2013 referred to above was arrived at following considerable internal work over a period by my Department involving, among other things, data gathering and consultation with private sector sources relating to the specific changes to be made.

There is no readily available underlying data or methodology on which to base reliable estimates of the revenue that would arise from further changes to the SFT of the scale envisaged in the question.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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170. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated revenue that would be raised by reducing the tax free lump sum limit in circumstances (details supplied). [21197/18]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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173. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated revenue that would be raised by reducing the tax free lump sum limit from €200,000 to €150,000. [21200/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 170 and 173 together.

I am advised by Revenue that as there is no requirement to include data in tax returns in relation to tax free lumps of less than €200,000 (the current life-time limit on tax-free retirement lump sums), they have not been able to quantify the estimated yield for the Exchequer of the reduction of the tax free lump sum entitlement to the amounts outlined by the Deputy.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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174. To ask the Minister for Finance the legislative tax changes which are due to take effect in 2019; the cost and impact of each on net fiscal space in 2019, for example, pre-committed plans regarding mortgage interest relief and so on. [21201/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The principal tax measures for which legislation is in place and which will take effect in 2019 with an expected impact on the fiscal space are as follows:

- Finance Act 2017 legislated for the tapered extension of Mortgage Interest Relief through to the end of 2020. Mortgage Interest Relief is a tax relief based on the amount of interest paid in a tax year on a qualifying mortgage loan taken out between 2004 and 2012. The effect of the measure introduced in Finance Act 2017 was to provide for 75% of the relief in 2018, 50% of the relief in 2019 and 25% of the relief in 2020.

- Four measures have sunset clauses dated 31 December 2018 (cost figures relate to the last year published):

- HRI (Home Renovation Incentive) (s.477B of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997): Direct cost to the Exchequer was €21.4m in 2014, note that HRI relief is split into two years hence the lag in statistics);

- Start Your Own Business (s.472AA of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1977): Direct cost to the Exchequer was €15.2m in 2015;

- Stock Relief (s.666 of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997) and Stock Relief for Young Trained Farmers (s.667B of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997): Direct cost to the Exchequer was €6.1m in 2015;

- Transfers of agricultural land to young trained farmers (s.81AA of the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999): Direct cost to the Exchequer was €4.6m in 2016.

- The Deposit Interest Retention Tax (DIRT) rate is set to decrease by 2% in 2019 to 35% and by a further 2% in 2020 to 33% (this was provided for in section 21 of the Finance Act 2016).

The Deputy may also wish to note that a Charities VAT compensation scheme was announced during Budget 2018. This will take effect from 1 January 2018 but will be paid one year in arrears i.e. in 2019, charities will be able to reclaim some element of the VAT costs arising in 2018. Charities will be entitled to a refund of a proportion of their VAT costs based on the level of non-public funding they receive. A capped fund of €5 million will be available to the scheme in 2019. It is intended that the relevant legislative instrument to give legal effect to this provision will be introduced in 2018.

The effect of the above measures on fiscal space, along with other discretionary revenue measures are set out in Table A6 of the Stability Programme Update, which shows the net impact in 2019 as 0.0% of GDP.