Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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471. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of persons availing of the single person child carer credit. [19357/22]

Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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472. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated cost of decoupling the single person child carer credit from the child benefit payment and making it equitably available to both parents where custody of a child or children is shared; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19358/22]

Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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473. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated cost of equivalising the tax rate for recipients of the single person child carer credit with the single earner two-adult household tax rate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19359/22]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 471, 472 and 473 together.

The 2009 Commission on Taxation reviewed the One-Parent Family Tax Credit and acknowledged that it played a role in supporting and incentivising the labour market participation of single and widowed parents. However, in its recommendations, the Commission concluded that the credit should be retained but that it should be allocated to the principal carer of the child only. A feature of the One-Parent Family Tax Credit was that it could be claimed by multiple individuals in respect of the same child, resulting in an unsustainable position.

The One-Parent Family Tax Credit was replaced with the Single Person Child Carer Tax Credit (SPCCC) from 1 January 2014. The current value of the credit is €1,650 per annum. In addition to the credit, a qualifying claimant is entitled to an additional €4,000 on the standard rate income tax band.

However, the credit is more strategically targeted, in that it will in the first instance only be available to the principal carer of the child, who has a qualifying child resident with him or her for the whole or greater part of the tax year and who satisfies the other conditions of the relief. To qualify as a single person for the purposes of the SPCCC, the claimant must not be jointly assessed for income tax as a married person or civil partner, or be living with his or her spouse or civil partner. An individual can only receive one SPCCC irrespective of the number of qualifying children residing with him or her.

If both parents have equal custody (by court order) and the child resides with each parent for an equal part of the tax year, the primary claimant is the parent who is in receipt of Child Benefit from the Department of Social Protection. However, it should be noted that this ‘tie-breaker’ test is only relevant for the purposes of determining a primary claimant for this credit in the unusual situation where the child resides with each parent for an equal amount of time.

A primary claimant can relinquish entitlement to the SPCCC to a secondary claimant. The secondary claimant can then claim the credit if he or she qualifies as a single person and the qualifying child resides with him or her for at least 100 days throughout the tax year. Detailed information on the SPCCC can be found on Revenue’s website at link: www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/income-tax-capital-gains-tax-corporation-tax/part-15/15-01-41.pdf which may be of interest to the Deputy.

I am satisfied that the SPCCC in its current form is targeting limited State resources to where they are most needed. As such, I have no plans to reinstate a system such as the One Parent Family Tax Credit.

To answer the Deputy’s specific question, the number of taxpayers claiming the SPCCC for the years 2014 – 2018 (the latest year for which data are currently available) is set out below:

I am advised by Revenue that there are no data on its records to indicate the number of taxpayers sharing custody of a child or children and therefore it is not possible to quantify the potential cost of making the SPCCC available to both parents in these circumstances. 

I am further advised by Revenue that the cost to the Exchequer of increasing the standard rate band for SPCCC claimants to €45,800, to be in line with that of a one earner married/civil partnership taxpayer unit, is estimated at €16m.