New Household Tax - Boycott

martingriff

MajorMax wrote: »

When did we turn into a nation of whingers? This is a tax that was a requirement of the last bailout funds we have received and spent.

The Government aren't bringing this in for a laugh. We have no more money, we need more money.

Part of the Social Contract is that we agree that the Government can and will levy taxes and we will duly pay them.

I paid this tax and IF it increases in the coming years I will pay that as well.

The Government agreed not to increase Income tax to raise money and so far they haven't. Where did you think the money was going to come from?

I have to laugh at people who say that we need Michael O' Leary to run this country and he'd sort it out. How? happy thoughts and teddy bears? No. He'd tax the crap out of us, probably literally.

If you don't want to pay this tax then don't, leave, the door is open. If you want to stay in this country you are expected to pay your way.

Changing to the property tax. (all parties had a form of it in there manifetoes)

I do agree with all you said

djpbarry

Here's a question...

Why is it that during the boom, when shenanigans and poor governance were rife, people were prepared to pay colossal amounts of tax when purchasing property without mass protest.

Now, people are objecting to a charge, orders of magnitude smaller, citing shenanigans and poor governance.

What gives?

Dannyboy83

MajorMax wrote: »

I have to laugh at people who say that we need Michael O' Leary to run this country and he'd sort it out. How? happy thoughts and teddy bears? No. He'd tax the crap out of us, probably literally.

He probably wouldn't...

The Ryanair model is low expense/low cost and paying for anything you want after that. That's at least 90 degrees away from the Irish government strategy, if not the full 180.

The first thing Michael O' Leary would do, would be to tear up the CPA.

If Ryanair cannot get bum on seats , then they cancel flights.
If Ryanair were to try the government strategy, they'd insist the empty flights keep flying, but try to get other passengers to pay for them.

meglome

It's been said by a number of people including me but it's amazing that most of the left in this country are against a real property tax. A full property tax is a sustainable tax on wealth and is seen and used that way all over the world.

meglome

djpbarry wrote: »

Here's a question...

Why is it that during the boom, when shenanigans and poor governance were rife, people were prepared to pay colossal amounts of tax when purchasing property without mass protest.

Now, people are objecting to a charge, orders of magnitude smaller, citing shenanigans and poor governance.

What gives?

As I was saying in the other thread the difference is their houses are not 'worth' a million and more people generally are having their taxes raised not lowered. It's incredible what self interest can do to how much people care.

c montgomery

MajorMax wrote: »

When did we turn into a nation of whingers? This is a tax that was a requirement of the last bailout funds we have received and spent.

The Government aren't bringing this in for a laugh. We have no more money, we need more money.

Part of the Social Contract is that we agree that the Government can and will levy taxes and we will duly pay them.

I paid this tax and IF it increases in the coming years I will pay that as well.

The Government agreed not to increase Income tax to raise money and so far they haven't. Where did you think the money was going to come from?

I have to laugh at people who say that we need Michael O' Leary to run this country and he'd sort it out. How? happy thoughts and teddy bears? No. He'd tax the crap out of us, probably literally.

If you don't want to pay this tax then don't, leave, the door is open. If you want to stay in this country you are expected to pay your way.

No, the first thing he would do is cut costs and get rid of waste. Thats what he did with his airline and thats what the politicians should do in this country before they go looking for more money to waste.

meglome

c montgomery wrote: »

No, the first thing he would do is cut costs and get rid of waste. Thats what he did with his airline and thats what the politicians should do in this country before they go looking for more money to waste.

Do you honestly think there is 14 billion per year to be saved from cutting out wastage?

c montgomery

meglome wrote: »

Do you honestly think there is 14 billion per year to be saved from cutting out wastage?

From cutting out wastage, reducing excessive wages, reducing excessive welfare, i bet they could find about 10 billion.

The rest they could find in tax which would be more palatable once its established that it is no longer being wasted.

meglome

c montgomery wrote: »

From cutting out wastage, reducing excessive wages, reducing excessive welfare, i bet they could find about 10 billion.

The rest they could find in tax which would be more palatable once its established that it is no longer being wasted.

I'd like to see some backup for those figures.

That aside for a mo, you do realise that we'd be borrowing this extra money while we sort out everything to your satisfaction?

c montgomery

meglome wrote: »

I'd like to see some backup for those figures.

That aside for a mo, you do realise that we'd be borrowing this extra money while we sort out everything to your satisfaction?

Its opinion based so no backup, i just think that welfare is too high in this country, there is lots of waste and duplication and that public sector wages are too high in certain areas. Example, compare welfare in Ireland with the UK.

My only contribution to this thread so far was to state that Mick o leary would cut costs before increasing taxes which of course is a pointless argument as it will never become a possibility.

I dont disagree with taxes, i just disagree with increasing costs for people before reducing waste/expenditure.

I have my own business and I know how things work in an efficient environment. I just wish our government did.

later12

Do any of the people advocating the introduction of a new property tax think personal and household taxes are more helpful in fiscal consolidations than expenditure cuts?

Why are we paying for inefficient local government, why are we not rationalising it instead?

In case anyone's missed it, we have experiences of both revenue based and expenditure based consolidations in the 1980s. The revenue based consolidation of the FitzGerald era failed miserably.

On the other hand, Ireland in the late 1980s was a textbook economic example of an expansionary fiscal consolidation which is heavily dependent upon expenditure cuts. It worked. It worked elsewhere too. If something has been shown to work, surely logic dictates you try and repeat it.

I never cease to be amazed at the attitude to protesting and direct grass roots action in Ireland. We can galvanize thousands into civil disobedience and whip the nation up into a frenzy of ethics about a relatively small, commonplace tax that will go directly into the coffers of each of our local authorities, benefit us all personally and directly in our local area, and give us a more equitable means of distributing our tax take within society, yet we sit idly by and do absolutely nothing while billions of our tax Euros are squandered on repayments to unsecured bondholders, or pumped into zombie banks??

I think the people of this country should get their priorities straight....

RichardAnd

Deleted User wrote: »

I never cease to be amazed at the attitude to protesting and direct grass roots action in Ireland. We can galvanize thousands into civil disobedience and whip the nation up into a frenzy of ethics about a relatively small, commonplace tax that will go directly into the coffers of each of our local authorities, benefit us all personally and directly in our local area, and give us a more equitable means of distributing our tax take within society, yet we sit idly by and do absolutely nothing while billions of our tax Euros are squandered on repayments to unsecured bondholders, or pumped into zombie banks??

I think the people of this country should get their priorities straight....

I agree fully with you on the subject in bold.

However, with regards to where the property tax will go, I would ask how it can be known that the income generated from the tax will indeed go into the coffers of local authorities?

djpbarry

later12 wrote: »

Do any of the people advocating the introduction of a new property tax think personal and household taxes are more helpful in fiscal consolidations than expenditure cuts?

Why does it have to be a choice between one or the other? And let's not forget that the public (or at least a sizeable chunk of it) has been just as vocal in opposition to cuts as tax increases.

RichardAnd

RichardAnd wrote: »

with regards to where the property tax will go, I would ask how it can be known that the income generated from the tax will indeed go into the coffers of local authorities?

We can only believe what our government are telling us on that issue. Whether we should do that or not is a whole different argument, but my understanding from various media interviews with government spokespeople is that that's what the charge is paving the way for.

I do agree with earlier posters though, that if we are being charged to fund local authority spending, then we deserve our money to be spent frugally and efficiently, and so we should see some public sector reform in tandem with the new charge in order to do away with the culture of corruption and waste that we've become accustomed to. This is my main reservation about the charge and the idea of local authority taxes here in general-i just dont think the government has the bottle to take on the unions and properly reform the public sector so that we aren't wasting our money.

As for the core idea of the charge itself though, I think it's a good idea broadly speaking, and I think there are more important issues we should be protesting about instead.

djpbarry

I think this may be of interest to some who claim the charge is "unfair":

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Thursday, March 29, 2012, 19:11

Fingleton facing Anglo action

Legal proceedings were taken this afternoon against former Irish Nationwide chief executive Michael Fingleton and other former directors of the building society, the former Anglo Irish Bank that is winding down Irish Nationwide has confirmed.

Mike Aynsley, chief executive of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, formerly Anglo, said the bank would issue a "protective plenary summons" against Mr Fingleton, former Irish Nationwide chairman Michael Walsh and four other former senior officers of the building society.

A spokesman for the bank this evening confirmed that the proceedings have been issued against the six men, including Mr Fingleton, contrary to the bank’s earlier statement at its results presentation that the action was against five individuals in total. The spokesman declined to name the other individuals being sued.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0329/breaking29.html

later12

djpbarry wrote: »

Why does it have to be a choice between one or the other?

Because at this stage, that's exactly what it is.

There is strong evidence to suggest that if you want to an expansionary fiscal consolidation, which is what the Irish programme depends on, you need to focus on expenditure cuts and not household taxes.

I am very wary of opening up a new tax head on households when it seems there is a long way to go in tackling expenditure, perhaps most blatantly in terms of waste at county council levels for the purposes of this discussion, but also in social welfare.

We can look abroad for the international evidence that was posted earlier, but I would suggest the answer is to be found in our own back yard. Ireland has tried consolidation based heavily on household taxes in the early-mid 1980s under the FitzGerald administration. It did not work.

We then engaged in a period of fiscal retrenchment. In line with experience elsewhere, not only did it work, it was expansionary and helped give rise to the 1990s economic boom. Lets do what works elsewhere and has been observed to work in Ireland. That's not difficult.

Gloomtastic!

djpbarry wrote: »

I think this may be of interest to some who claim the charge is "unfair":

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Thursday, March 29, 2012, 19:11

Fingleton facing Anglo action

Legal proceedings were taken this afternoon against former Irish Nationwide chief executive Michael Fingleton and other former directors of the building society, the former Anglo Irish Bank that is winding down Irish Nationwide has confirmed.

Mike Aynsley, chief executive of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, formerly Anglo, said the bank would issue a "protective plenary summons" against Mr Fingleton, former Irish Nationwide chairman Michael Walsh and four other former senior officers of the building society.

A spokesman for the bank this evening confirmed that the proceedings have been issued against the six men, including Mr Fingleton, contrary to the bank’s earlier statement at its results presentation that the action was against five individuals in total. The spokesman declined to name the other individuals being sued.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0329/breaking29.html

Another arrest or charge against a banker just before a big payout to bondholders. God, they must think we're stupid.

djpbarry

later12 wrote: »

We can look abroad for the international evidence that was posted earlier, but I would suggest the answer is to be found in our own back yard. Ireland has tried consolidation based heavily on household taxes in the early-mid 1980s under the FitzGerald administration. It did not work.

We then engaged in a period of fiscal retrenchment. In line with experience elsewhere, not only did it work, it was expansionary and helped give rise to the 1990s economic boom. Lets do what works elsewhere and has been observed to work in Ireland. That's not difficult.

Well sure, if we overlook the fact that a sizeable chunk of the public is rabidly opposed to "austerity", it's pretty bloody straightforward alright.

djpbarry

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Another arrest or charge against a banker just before a big payout to bondholders. God, they must think we're stupid.

Do go on.

later12

djpbarry wrote: »

Well sure, if we overlook the fact that a sizeable chunk of the public is rabidly opposed to "austerity", it's pretty bloody straightforward alright.

You asked me why it ought to be a choice between one or the other. That's my answer. I recognize that austerity is unpopular too.

Having said that, we don't have approximately 1,000,000 households declining to pay PRSI and VAT and other less sentient taxes. The tax increases and retrenchment to date didn't face these sorts of problems, maybe expenditure cuts would actually be more straightforward than a property tax.

Gloomtastic!

djpbarry wrote: »

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Another arrest or charge against a banker just before a big payout to bondholders. God, they must think we're stupid.

Do go on.

For starters.....

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/11/01/the-timing-of-the-anglo-arrest-and-tomorrows-payout-to-unsecured-bondholders/

http://www.politics.ie/forum/justice/180407-ivor-callely-arrested-breaking-news-rte-20.html

K-9

later12 wrote: »

Do any of the people advocating the introduction of a new property tax think personal and household taxes are more helpful in fiscal consolidations than expenditure cuts?

Why are we paying for inefficient local government, why are we not rationalising it instead?

In case anyone's missed it, we have experiences of both revenue based and expenditure based consolidations in the 1980s. The revenue based consolidation of the FitzGerald era failed miserably.

On the other hand, Ireland in the late 1980s was a textbook economic example of an expansionary fiscal consolidation which is heavily dependent upon expenditure cuts. It worked. It worked elsewhere too. If something has been shown to work, surely logic dictates you try and repeat it.

I know my local Co. Co. has cut the wage bill, whether that makes it more efficient, I doubt it.

As for McSharry, he had little option, taxes were 65/70% levels, not far off PS pay tax rates now, the obvious choice was to cut taxes.

In 87 we'd gone through a decade of raising taxes to meet the deficit that hadn't worked.

In 2012 we''d gone through 2 decades of reducing direct taxes to unsustainable levels, our tax revenue became dependent on buying houses and 4*4's, LCD TV's and iPods.

Slightly off topic, but nonetheless relevant to the thread. All of these "coincidental" high profile arrests which take up broadcast minutes and column inches right at the time that our government is pulling major strokes re; repayments of large bonds etc. is a good example of the kind of systematic corruption and collusion that the Mahon report shone a light on only last week.

The Gardai and law enforcement agencies should be completely free of any perception of collusion or political influence in how they operate, and yet we see law enforcement and politicians scratching each others backs in a manner clearly designed to take some focus off of some of the key political issues of the day.

Mahon was right: This kind of rot really is a disease inherent in every part of the machinery of our state.

djpbarry

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

For starters.....

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/11/01/the-timing-of-the-anglo-arrest-and-tomorrows-payout-to-unsecured-bondholders/

http://www.politics.ie/forum/justice/180407-ivor-callely-arrested-breaking-news-rte-20.html

For starters what? I'm really not arsed reading through blog posts and/or a thread on another site - what's your point?

djpbarry

Deleted User wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but nonetheless relevant to the thread. All of these "coincidental" high profile arrests which take up broadcast minutes and column inches right at the time that our government is pulling major strokes re; repayments of large bonds etc. is a good example of the kind of systematic corruption and collusion that the Mahon report shone a light on only last week.

If nobody is charged or arrested, people scream "corruption". When somebody is charged or arrested, people scream "corruption".

oscarBravo

djpbarry wrote: »

If nobody is charged or arrested, people scream "corruption". When somebody is charged or arrested, people scream "corruption".

The level of public discourse really is shockingly poor for the past while, and shows no signs of improvement. The comments on any given thejournal.ie are incredibly depressing.

heyjude

Deleted User wrote: »

I never cease to be amazed at the attitude to protesting and direct grass roots action in Ireland. We can galvanize thousands into civil disobedience and whip the nation up into a frenzy of ethics about a relatively small, commonplace tax that will go directly into the coffers of each of our local authorities, benefit us all personally and directly in our local area, and give us a more equitable means of distributing our tax take within society, yet we sit idly by and do absolutely nothing while billions of our tax Euros are squandered on repayments to unsecured bondholders, or pumped into zombie banks??

I think the people of this country should get their priorities straight....

The Household Charge is the straw that broke the camel's back, in of inself its true that it isn't significant, but it is the forerunner of a property tax regime that is sure to be far more expensive and the fact that this tax is being introduced without any widespread campaign to root out wastage and inefficiencies in local government in the country, will just entrench higher rates of property tax than would be necessary if we stamped out the waste first.

People were also angered at the threats from the government for non-payers, from the initial threat of heavy fines and jail, to deductions from wages/social welfare/pensions, squads of council workers calling from door to door demanding payment, the possible use of debt collection agencies, a charge on your house after your death and most critically, financial penalties and interest being charged from day one, and all for 100 Euro. Yet where is the evidence of the same tough and speedy approach being applied to the pursuit of bankers, building society chiefs, property developers, businessmen and corrupt/incompetent politicians etc, whose behaviour led to the collapse of our economy ? They will chase the ordinary Joe to the gates of hell over a small sum, but to those that helped cause our downfall, no sign of legal action, fines or penalties against them, even several years later.

Justifying the introduction of a property tax through comparison with other countries, as the government has done, is a dangerous road to go down, most of the named countries did not have the same high rates of stamp duty, do not have VRT, in many cases have much lower rates of excise duty on beer, wine and cigarettes and in the case of the US, they have far lower taxes on fuel and much lower VAT rates. Virtually all the countries mentioned also have a lower cost of living than we do here.

There is also huge degree of dishonesty about the way the payment of the Household Charge will pay for your local services and how if you don't want the libraries, swimming pools, parks etc closed then you need to pay. In fact, all Household Charge payments go into a central fund from which the Dept of the Enviroment distributes funds to local authorities around the country, with many counties likely to contribute far more to the fund than their local authority will receive back, as the Dept gives proportionately higher grants to counties with a small rate income, while counties such as Dublin, Cork and the few others will get back proportionately less than their households pay. So even if nobody in somewhere like Laois paid their household charge, its unlikely their overall share of the total national local authority budget would fall very much. This gap between what is paid by householders in each county and what their local authority gets back, will widen under a full property tax, as property tax payments on houses in the big cities will be higher, but the amount that their local authorities get back from the Dept will remain relatively static. This is also a big difference between the property tax mooted here and that which is found abroad, where the money raised locally is spent locally, that won't be the case here.

I think people also resent being asked to pay a Household Charge to help support local authorities, when many of these same local authorities have spent millions over the past ten years building expensive new headquarters for themselves, without directly consulting the householders of their area, many of whom will now ending up paying for the loans and upkeep of these expensive new buildings.

later12

K-9 wrote: »

As for McSharry, he had little option, taxes were 65/70% levels, not far off PS pay tax rates now, the obvious choice was to cut taxes.

In 87 we'd gone through a decade of raising taxes to meet the deficit that hadn't worked.

In 2012 we''d gone through 2 decades of reducing direct taxes to unsustainable levels

Well I'm not sure if you're suggesting it, but I would be uncomfortable with the idea that the 82-87 years were a valid contributor to economic recovery. Yes, FitzGerald's policies looked good on paper. But an academic economist's theories often come under churlish attack in the chaos of the real economy. It was a gamble he took, and unfortunately failed. I'm sure it injured him personally that it did so.

And indeed it would be remiss of me to pretend that FF's collar was not against the wall. Colm McCarthy, who is a man in a position to know about these things from a policy point of view, feels that the FF Government of the day are given too much credit for its expenditure cuts, about which they arguably had little choice.

Whatever the motivation of the Haughey government, its policy did work and this retrenchment has today become a well cited example of the paradoxical cut & grow which we've sometimes been warned is so impossible.

I'm not saying we necessarily must abandon all new revenue raising measures. But lets at least get the low hanging fruit out of the way first. And co-incidentally, that involves local government reform.

K-9

later12 wrote: »

Well I'm not sure if you're suggesting it, but I would be uncomfortable with the idea that the 82-87 years were a valid contributor to economic recovery. Yes, FitzGerald's policies looked good on paper. But an academic economist's theories often come under churlish attack in the chaos of the real economy. It was a gamble he took, and unfortunately failed. I'm sure it injured him personally that it did so.

And indeed it would be remiss of me to pretend that FF's collar was not against the wall. Colm McCarthy, who is a man in a position to know about these things from a policy point of view, feels that the FF Government of the day are given too much credit for its expenditure cuts, about which they arguably had little choice.

Whatever the motivation of the Haughey government, its policy did work and this retrenchment has today become a well cited example of the paradoxical cut & grow which we've sometimes been warned is so impossible.

I'm not saying we necessarily must abandon all new revenue raising measures. But lets at least get the low hanging fruit out of the way first. And co-incidentally, that involves local government reform.

Definitely not, more or less in complete agreement, though I do think you are putting too much emphasis on Garret and I'd be a critic of him economically, you're ignoring the Labour party and a very different Labour party to the current version, or indeed the Rainbow one, or indeed the Democratic Left love child!

I really don't know how much of Garret's idea ever got implemented with a militant Labour party coalition partner. My suspicion would be his economic beliefs became a victim of political circumstances.

As for McCarthy, I think Haughey is given far too much credit, MacSharry gets nothing and therefore McCarthy seems to ignore the internal politics. Haughey was perfectly willing to keep doing what Haughey always did, get a deal done, sure didn't he do it in 89 with the PD's?

The difference this time was MacSharry threatened to resign if the cuts, both tax and expenditure wise, were not implemented. Normally that would have been met with something like the response given to another Minister, who after a dressing down, turned round and couldn't find the oak paneled exit door and after several forlorn grasping seconds, was told to use "the fecking window."

This was the Minister of Finance in a Minority Government dependent on the Tallaght strategy, threatening to resign, a guaranteed election, the 5th in a decade and just after one that didn't give Haughey his coveted overall majority, despite Garret's bumbling. You and I know there was no other option economically, Haughey only cared about elections.

So yes, there was another option and McCarthy shouldn't dismiss it. The other option was Haughey dragging us into the IMF.