Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

211. To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated additional savings that could be made by not indexing income tax bands and income tax rates. [23764/23]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Programme for Government, “Our Shared Future”, states that “from Budget 2022 onwards, in the event that incomes are again rising as the economy recovers, credits and bands will be index linked to earnings. This will be done to prevent an increase in the real burden of income tax, to prevent more low income workers being taken into the tax net because of no changes to the tax system and to ensure there is no increase in the number of people having to pay higher income tax and USC rates”.

The Summer Economic Statement (SES), which will be published in the coming months, will set-out a budgetary framework within which Budget 2024 can be delivered.

For the information of the Deputy, page 9 of Revenue’s post-Budget 2023 Ready Reckoner, published in November 2023, includes the estimated cost of indexation at 1 percentage point, across the main tax credits and standard rate income tax bands, as well as USC rate bands and exemption limits. This information is set out in the table below or available at the following link –www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/ready-reckoner.pdf

Apart from providing a basis to calculate indicatively the cost of a given level of indexation, the information in the table may also be used to estimate roughly the annual savings that might arise from a policy of non-indexation.