Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I am advised by Revenue that all those in receipt of income liable to income tax are subject to an Income Tax assessment. Such income can be made up of many sources, including employment income, profit from a trade or profession, rental income, dividend income, and many other sources.

The Deputy should note that the data presented on page 2 of Revenue’s Ready Reckoner (available at the following link: www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/ready-reckoner.pdf) incorporates all taxpayers subject to income tax, regardless of the source of their taxable income. I assume the Deputy means that unearned income would be removed for statistical analyses only. Furthermore, it is assumed that reference to unearned income means passive income (i.e., a source of income not earned from working).

It is not possible to quantify the impact sought by the Deputy as a taxpayer’s income tax liability is calculated on the total of their combined income sources (i.e., both earned and unearned income). Even if it were possible to do this, it would present a very misleading picture, and not in accordance with how income tax is actually applied by the Tax Code. Specifically, the Tax Code does not differentiate between earned and unearned income when applying the 40% or 20% rates of tax.

Finally, there is no information available in Revenue data to classify taxpayers as part-time and therefore such taxpayers cannot be identified and excluded for statistical analyses.