An Irish Wealth Tax
2017 promises to be a year of change with Brexit and Trumponomics gathering pace with diffcult to predict outcomes. One thing remaining constant is that the fiscal space available for Budget 2018 will remain tight and that discretion for current and capital spending increases and tax cuts will be...
ICTU Union College Presentation: The Welfare State & Redistribution
External event contribution Dr Micheál Collins, Assistant Professor of Social Policy, UCD - presentation for the ICTU Union College The Welfare State and Redistribution on 16th December, 2016.
Autumn Statement 2016
The Autumn Statement delivered by the new chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is the first substantial financial statement made by the government since the BREXIT referendum result in June. Naturally the referendum and its consequences featured heavily in the announcements, but it is still...
Monday Blog: Cherishing the children's teeth equally?
The term ‘social wage’ is sometimes used to refer to those public goods and services consumed by workers and their families. Apart from wages earned over a given period we enjoy the benefits of ‘free’ or heavily subsidised services in areas such as education and health (although the balance has...
Monday Blog: Tax heresies and half-baked truths
Every heresy begins with a half-baked truth. Recent weeks have seen claims that the overall level of personal taxation in the Republic of Ireland is too high and that particular groups have been unduly burdened especially since the onset of fiscal austerity in 2009. Certainly, taxes were increased...
Monday Blog: The Summer of Big Numbers
And what a summer it has been. It was the summer of the ‘big numbers’. There was €13 billion in claimed back tax from Apple. There was an undisclosed large sum of money possibly running into billions in relation to vulture fund tax avoidance planning (referred to as ‘Section 110’ tax). The ultimate...
Presentation to Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight
External event contribution Tom McDonnell appeared before the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight on the 6th of September 2016. In his opening statement on the Economic and Fiscal Position in the Context of Budget 2017 he discussed the fiscal space and identified priorities for inclusive growth in Budget 2017. These...
Opening Statement to the Budgetary Oversight Committee
External event contribution The Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight commenced a series of pre budget hearings last week with contributions from DKM, NERI, the Irish Central Bank, and the ESRI. The hearings will continue this week with contributions from the Fiscal Council and from the European Commission and then next week...
Monday Blog: More myth busting
Notwithstanding the highly significant events of recent days and the fall out from the recent UK referendum on EU membership this week’s Monday Blog is focussed on personal taxation trends over time in the Republic of Ireland. (Attention will be given to the implications of UK exit from the EU in...
Fiscal Space: A Short Primer
The parameters for Budget 2017 are set by the requirements of the preventive arm of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The preventive arm is assessed under two main pillars. These are the Structural Balance Rule and the Expenditure Benchmark Rule. A balanced budget in structural terms is a...