Sindo Rant about Taxes

Inverse to the power of one!

Meh, it's the usual from the Sindo this Sunday...rabble rabble rabble

And in there is this one:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/stealth-charges-force-us-to-suffer-a-lifetime-of-levies-2640722.html

But heres the thing, even with a cynical eye to the article itself, the reality is that an entire multitude of various taxation exists in Ireland and it is in no way centralized or streamlined rather it's just been tacked on ad-hoc since the creation of the state.

Which leads me to think that beyond the rant, we might indeed have not stealth taxes, but a stealth crisis from the impact of these taxes on business, the consumer and the general cost of living. The fact of the matter is that for all the events of the past three years, the costs of living in Ireland are still disproportionaly higher then in other European countries. Much as we have blamed retailers and businesses for raising prices in the past, the fact is that a lot of these increases outside of gouging have also been due to the cost of doing business.

Here's the crisis part.....at a time where we are trying to improve our cost per productivity to compete in the International markets, by these extra, uncontrolled, ad-hoc tax increases, we are pricing ourselves out of competitiveness, not only that but the income/cost ratio of living in Ireland is driving our best workers away, thus further impacting on the economy.

We need taxes, that much is sure, but more importantly we need tax consolidation, streamlining and control, we also need charge/levy oversight to ensure that private businesses are not tacking ad-hoc charges on in enterprises that are sponsored by the state.

This has been spiraling out of control since the creation of the state, the only thing is now the damage it's doing might really bring the whole lot crashing down.

shadowninty

Don't read newspapers, but I would agree - taxes are really messy

WHY do we need 3 taxes on income?
It all goes to the same pool these days

That's just one example, millions could be saved on beuraucracy

hatrickpatrick

Why all these "income levies"? Why does the government try (feebly) to hide the truth? Why not call a spade a spade and increase income tax by 1% instead of adding all these over complicated "levies" and "universal charges" etc?

hatrickpatrick

The new levy on private pensions will cost around €500 a year, while the losses at Quinn Insurance will mean we all have to pay an extra levy on all motor and home insurance policies -- likely to be set at between one per cent and two per cent of the premium cost.

This is the part that really makes me rage.
Quinn was a private company, was it not? Those are private losses. Why the hell should tax or government spending even come into that? If a private company goes bankrupt, it goes bankrupt. End of story. F*ck bailouts. You screw up, you lose. Isn't that how a free market is meant to work?

ei.sdraob

shadowninty wrote: »

Don't read newspapers, but I would agree - taxes are really messy

WHY do we need 3 taxes on income?
It all goes to the same pool these days

That's just one example, millions could be saved on beuraucracy

Its worse than that when it comes to measuring government intake some of the taxes are not counted as taxes and endup being excluded from debate.

But yes why have such a complicated tax system? Is it just to keep accountants and more revenue employees in employment?

Inverse to the power of one!

ei.sdraob wrote: »

But yes why have such a complicated tax system? Is it just to keep accountants and more revenue employees in employment?

Kind of......

I tend to blame this on the history and nature of our Government structure. We basically inherited the English system of Bureaucratic management and instead of refining it with modern management structures have only instead further enforced it as invested interests manipulated the system to feather their own nests.

Rather then have only Revenue gather and distribute income to the various departments and authorities, it was far more profitable for this to remain uncentralised and ad-hoc.

I see this as further proof that we need extreme reform of governance in this country, the fact that the public sector is exempt from the new pension levy just demonstrates how extremely ridiculous the situation has become, we are now witness to prejudicial taxation!

We just can't go on like this!

BeardyFunzo

ei.sdraob wrote: »

But yes why have such a complicated tax system? Is it just to keep accountants and more revenue employees in employment?

My guess is that it keeps all those people who can afford an accountant from paying as much as they should while at the same time ensuring that those who do pay pay too much.

dan_d

I wish they would just take the word "levy" out of the English language...

Geuze

There is a perfectly sound rationale for having social insurance and tax systems.

Most modern societies have parallel tax and social ins systems.

If you don't have separate PRSI, then how do we determine eligibility for social benefits???


By the way, most countries have more deductions from pay than we have.

spank_inferno

Geuze wrote: »

If you don't have separate PRSI, then how do we determine eligibility for social benefits???
.

The curiosity of PRSI is that it has nothing to do with social benefits.

If you have never worked a day in your life your social benefits are the exact same (if not less) than those of a 20year taxpaying worker who has recently lost his job.

I would agree... end the levies.... just have a standardised income tax (retaining the proportionality based on income of course)

HivemindXX

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This is the part that really makes me rage.
Quinn was a private company, was it not? Those are private losses. Why the hell should tax or government spending even come into that? If a private company goes bankrupt, it goes bankrupt. End of story. F*ck bailouts. You screw up, you lose. Isn't that how a free market is meant to work?

Quinn is a special case because it's an insurance company. The state guarantees these which is generally seen as a good thing since the consequences to individuals if an insurance company goes bust are pretty bad. Person X is crippled for life in a car crash caused by Person Y. Person Y's insurance company goes bust and in all liklihood both Person X and Person Y lose everything they have paying the medical bills.

Since the fund which pays out in these cases is already running low it needed to be topped up and a levy was chosen as the mechanism. This has one benefit in that people who don't have insurance don't have to pay (so they won't be angry with the government) and there is also still the outside chance that people don't equate levy with tax and the PR won't be as bad as simply raising income tax.

Since income tax is likely to be increased at some point in the relatively near future the government might want to keep this option in their back pocket until they can do it in a more significant way.

pog it

But seriously, how many of these cases happen where there is an accident and person Y's insurance company has gone broke in the aftermath of their insuring with them? I mean can't people just switch insurance policy now if they are in any doubt about Quinn?

Also why should innocent people all have to pay this levy? Can't the government stump it up when cases like hivemind has proposed actually happen? Honestly this is a crazy stealth tax that people should refuse point blank to pay.