Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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741. To ask the Minister for Finance the cost of increasing each tax credit by €100. [43863/25]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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742. To ask the Minister for Finance the individual cost of increasing each tax credit by €100. [43864/25]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 741 and 742 together.

The estimated cost of increasing the main tax credits can be found in the Revenue Ready Reckoner (Post Budget 2025 – page 5), available on the Revenue website at:

www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/ready-reckoner.pdf

These figures are based on 2025 estimates from the Revenue tax forecasting model using latest actual data for the year 2022, adjusted as necessary for income, self-employment, and employment trends in the interim. Revenue's Ready Reckoner will be updated in advance of Budget 2026, when updated data is available.

It is assumed that the Deputy’s proposal relates to the main universal tax credits. On that basis, and for the convenience of the Deputy, the relevant costs are set out in the table below.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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743. To ask the Minister for Finance the cost of introducing a new tax credit of €100 for all PAYE and self-employed workers earning up to or below standard rate band. [43865/25]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by Revenue that it is not in a position to provide the information requested in relation to 2025 or 2026, as their modelling tool, Tax Modeller, does not have the facility to do so. In the main, eligibility to tax credits is not dependent on the tax rate(s) that are applied to a taxpayer’s taxable income and Revenue has not developed a costing model that would operate in this manner.

In relation to actual data that Revenue holds, the latest year for which data is currently available for analysis is 2022. The datasets available for analysis in relation to 2022 do not contain the information required in relation to their standard rate cut off point, however an alternative approach is offered in order to provide a tentative estimate of the cost of the proposal.

In terms of singly assessed taxpayer units with a taxable income of less than €44,000, jointly assessed taxpayer units with one only person contributing to their total income and with a taxable income of less than €53,000 and jointly assessed taxpayer units with both partners contributing to their total income and with a combined taxable income of less than €88,000, the total number of taxpayer units in 2022 where their income fully or partly consists of Sch E PAYE income and/or profit from Case I/II activity, who would be eligible to this tax credit of €100, is 2.15 million. This credit would therefore have a total claimable amount, in 2022, of €215 million. 1.27 million taxpayer units had the ability to absorb this credit in 2022, taking this ability into account the estimated net cost is approximately €125 million in 2022.

A taxpayer unit refers to individuals, except in the case of jointly assessed couples who are treated as one taxpayer unit. This costing is in relation to providing the new credit of €100 at a taxpayer unit level, where one credit of €100 is available per taxpayer unit.