Ireland the land of taxes and endless "fees"

Nighttime22

Why is it in this country we seem to be paying high tax and a never ending list of "fee's", and yet never seem to have anything of value to show for it?

Our wages are taxed, We have to pay road tax, we have to pay a toll to use the road then, the gov have an extortionate rate of tax on fuel and the list goes on and on.... every single thing in this country is taxed, if they could gauge how many breaths of air a person took per day im sure they d try tax that too. If a person wants to set up a business there are fee's and taxes and endless bullshit and hoops deliberately designed to syphon money its actually crazy when you stand back and have a look at all the bullshit fee's and taxes there are.

And yet some how we are still nearly a quarter of a trillion euro in debt.

And **** all to show for it bar an extortionate cost of living and a **** healthcare system.

xxxxxxl

Golden circles, Handshakes, Jobs for the boys and Girls. Golden parachutes, Contracts for those in the know it's simple when you think about it.

road_high

I often think about this too and my conclusion is that we have a massively expensive and inefficient public service coupled with an eye wateringly large welfare state. Somehow this has to be paid for

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913902#Comment_119913902

I understand people have a gripe with SW but JSA is just a small part of it. Pensions is the biggest.

road_high

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913927#Comment_119913927

I know but there’s so many ancillary “benefits”. It’s out of control- they even advertise them on the radio now. The size of the state seems unprecedented now at any time I’ve been alive (I’m pushing 40). Of course the likes of me is still “entitled” to sweet FA

kirk.

It's mad handing out 400 for fuel allowance and 600 for electricity

There's so many annoying taxes and charges for everything

Not to mention the creeping regulation that's going on all the time

There's a subset then of the population who contribute nothing and get away with absolutely everything

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913929#Comment_119913929

I would just cut it to one payment everything included benchmarked stuff like that. Also done on a county basis. Someone in Tip does not need the same supports as Dublin for example.

Peregrinus

While we fondly think of ourselves as a heavily-taxed country, actually, this isn't true, and hasn't been for a long time. By comparison with other European countries, we're about mid-range. Comparing tax as a percentage of GDP (or, in Ireland case, as a percentage of GNI*, since out GDP figures are atypical) we are well behind France, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Spain, the UK and many other European countries. We're ahead of countries like Georgia, Romania, Albania, Kosovo and Russia. If you are dissatisfied with the quality of our public services well, perhaps this has something to do with that.

We think of ourselves as a high-tax country partly because we used to be, and partly because we still have a heavy concentration on personal income tax and expenditure taxes. Our overall tax take is low because we have low corporation tax, capital taxes, wealth taxes and property taxes, and very low social insurance taxes.

Strumms

It’s not going to get any better with the attitudes in government across all political spectra.

183 million was spent on direct provision alone in 2020…

not acceptable when back in June, there were 1500 people waiting to get funding for homecare packages. Lives and that of family in limbo having paid taxes here all their lives.. people being ‘staged’ taking up hospital beds because they don’t have funding for their homecare, people can’t get hospitalised for treatment because of this… waiting lists expanding and peoples wellbeing suffering.

a very vicious circle.

i don’t mind paying high taxes IF the key services and more besides are efficiently delivered.

• public transport
• healthcare, initial and rehabilitative, inpatient and outpatient.
• Enough gardai
• quality roads

Etc…

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913995#Comment_119913995

This is an issue the wrong hot button issues got far to much attention. Bread and butter running the country does not seem to be their game now. I just find it odd having live here over 20 years. Irish people take a very very long time to get livid about something. In private it's completely different I mean more in a group sense. Anyone able to explain that to me ?

joeguevara

We’ll all tax expenditure is public. And Social Protection, Health, education and justice ate up about 80%. With social protection and health being about 50 billion.

dotsman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913927#Comment_119913927

Not only is quite a lot of that pension spending on people who didn't contribute in a meaningful way (or even at all), but it is dwarfed by the huge spending on all "social" spending. Comparing it to JSA is like comparing apples to bananas.

joeguevara

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913995#Comment_119913995

Our tax take is 90 billion. 188 million while seems big is only 10 times more than the Popes visit to Ireland

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914001#Comment_119914001

Oh I know but side issue is either let people die or fund a small section of people that don't pay income tax. I would start with stuff like NGO funding give Asylum seekers nothing they get food and board. If they drink and smoke that's their problem. If they want to make a call use the one in the centre. There are tones of saving to be had but zero apatite to change it. Anyone rocking up pregnant for example should be raked over the coals and explain why they did not go to the first country they could get to. That's child endangerment in my eyes.

joeguevara

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914003#Comment_119914003

So asylum seekers get about €38 a week or €29 if a child to cover all essential items- what would you cut?

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914013#Comment_119914013

They get everything they need in the centre. Unless you are saying they don't supply soap water and a whole other host of stuff. What esential items are not already being supplied by the centre or an NGO.

joeguevara

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914030#Comment_119914030

All toiletries, toilet paper, sanitary towels, clothes, phone calls and local travel if they are going to work which can only happen if they haven’t got a first instance recommendation on their international protection application after 6 months.

Buster197456

Poorly run public service has to be paid for. What seems to be creeping in is levies and fees for nearly everything. A fat tax is next on the agenda. Takeaway tax is a definite. The minimum pricing was a disgrace. Publicans got that in. It seems they will tax anything to take the joy out of people's lives. We have such a poorly run public service. I know of people allegedly doing 20 hour weeks and getting paid for the full amount for the last ten years. And i don't think that's uncommon.

The money pit that is the health service has to be paid for. Also pension's for the public service. The whole public service needs a total revamp. People working in it are on the gravy train and it's paid for by every increasing taxes and levies/fees. Surely people not performing or incapable of doing their job should be held accountable. We are going to see increases in every tax over the years as levies from petrol cigs etc decrease. They will have to find the money for the wastage elsewhere.

The government just seem to use the blanket approach for everything. Like children's allowance that needs to be means tested. The blanket energy handout. Wastage go's on and on. The children's hospital. Any contract that seems to be handed out seems to overrun and go over budget.

The gravy train and wastage will never end and people will continue to pay high taxes and fees to fund it. Ireland will never change. It's to hard to change it and the political will is not there.

mmrs

We don't pay road tax in Ireland.

We do pay a lot, a wide base of taxes is a more stable, consistent source of income to the state. We definitely do not pay as much as a lot of our neighbours.

We also have a smaller gap between our poor and our rich than a lot of our neighbours due to a good social welfare system.

Things aren't brilliant but they aren't awful either. Just look at the UK. I'd personally prefer our system to theirs.

As someone who works you can feel like you're paying all this for nothing but someday your life might take an unexpected direction - you might loose your job or need to care for someone- and you might then find yourself benefitting from our wide and generous social welfare system. Then you might feel differently. It's there to protect us in case we need it but consider yourself fortunate if you don't ever need to.

Thelonious Monk

There's no road tax and MUP isn't a tax either

zell12

It is what we want!

We elect these politicians in one of the fairest voting systems on the planet. Michael Lowry, Bertie Ahern, Ray Burke were all re-elected by us.

Having said that, we should have higher direct taxes and lower indirect taxes, oh and water charges like 'normal' countries

blanch152

https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm

We are not a highly taxed country, that is simply untrue.

cagefactor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914995#Comment_119914995

https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/the-irish-mail-on-sunday/20220605/281612424041626 (hardly the bastion of honest this paper but just one example of many who say the oecd figures are misleading)

The charts here don't show the stealth taxes we pay. The ones that annoy me the most :

In Denmark/Sweden - students do not pay fee's. In Denmark, students even get an allowance from the govt of more than 1k a month.

Child Care - about 140€ a month in Sweden (regardless of how many kids) and state takes care of it, x 8-12 times that cost in Ireland per kid sometimes (another mortgage)

VRT on vehicles - all cars are more expensive than in Europe, and we even calculate VAT on top of VRT. The price differences can bet 20%, as a result we often get much cheaper versions with all sorts of things removed from the cars by the manufacturers to bring the prices down. If we ever have a united ireland that one has to go.

Capital Gains at 33%. - 4th highest in Europe I think. Denmark is 10% more but its an outlier, most countries are 10-20%.

Most expensive country in the EU to buy tobacco and alcohol.

Tickets for events like concerts/cinema can be double the price of same events in Europe. (not a tax but still annoys me)

Our VAT rate is upper tier, higher than Austria, Germany, Belgium, Spain, UK, Italy, Netherlands and others but behind Sweden/Denmark (25ish).

steddyeddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913978#Comment_119913978

That's very true P but I live in Germany and we get far more value for money here than I ever did in Ireland.

ELM327

My issue is not so much that we pay a lot of personal tax (which we do). However, the problem is value for money. We have to pay for everything on top of paying taxes. We spend a high amount per capita on the HSE yet unless you have the golden ticket (medical card) you are charged too. We pay social welfare for life. Even if the base rate isnt that high, it's the add ons. Someone in my extended family is on social welfare and with all the benefits and allowances I worked out for her that she'd need a job paying 45k approx just to break even, taking fuel allowance, rent allowance/hap, medical card etc.

Padraig Mor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913996#Comment_119913996

Exactly. Here in Cork the Council have no problem wasting money on 'robot trees' and rainbow crossings - yet many footpaths are covered with wet leaves, a serious slip hazard. Cut the PR **** lads, and sweep up the leaves - that's your job!

Ham_Sandwich

goverment should be doing more for people less taxes and less charges remember the council used to do the bins they should go back to that

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273068/ireland-the-land-of-taxes-and-endless-fees

It's why Ireland is called the rip off republic.

If there is a system where one can pay money for something, but get absolutely nothing in return, I am sure, this can work only in Ireland.

Regarding taxes, it's a bit similar to the US, one has to pay taxes and never ever get's anything in return.

You'd have to move to Germany or France or one of the Scandinavian countries, where you pay taxes, often a high amount of it, but you do get something in return, - better health care, better child care, better public transport for instance.

shesty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119914054#Comment_119914054

The thing is though, that I did lose my job for a year, back about 10 years ago due to the recession. I spent 12 months solid job hunting before I found another.

We had insurance to pay our mortgage, so I had to produce evidence for the insurance company every month of job hunting, and the responses that I got and a form stamped by social welfare.

Social welfare paid me 12 months of payments and then on month 11, the letter came - you've exhausted your 12 months, now we are going to means test you and probably move you to a lower payment.

I am not at all a fan of SW payments for life, but that letter irritated me. I am degree educated, I had bills, I've paid tax and I was busting my a$$ to find a job. And I was sharing queues at the welfare office with people who were either migrants/refugees here, loudly arguing their entitlement to every payment under the sun, and quite a number of Irish people at the same thing. I got 12 months and that was it, I was entitled to nothing else, despite having paid tax into the system that I suspect many of these people never did. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it quite annoying at the time.

It's the concept of "not raising" taxes but paying on the double and triple through charges, levies and on the spot fees that is most frustrating. AS someone else cited, the motor tax/road situation. And the Health service - funded by my taxes. Yet I pay for health insurance, because the taxpayer funded system can barely meet the needs to the country, and it shares its doctors with the "private" system. AND I pay 60eur per visit to see my GP, or 200eur per visit to see the consultant, despite having private insurance. Remind me why I have to do that, and it doesn't matter that "you can claim it back". Fact is, I have to have 200eur cash to hand, if I need to see a specialist for something. The same specialist paid by my tax on the other 2 days of the week that they work publicly, and paid by my insurance when needed. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913957#Comment_119913957

Then a teacher, nurse and Garda in Tipp doesn't need the same salary as their colleague in Dublin.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273068/ireland-the-land-of-taxes-and-endless-fees

...again, public debt is just the public entity of the money supply, as opposed to the private sector money supply, i.e. the credit supply, being in debt isnt always a bad thing, it just depends what that money is used for, unfortunately a significant amount of debt, in both the public and private domains, has been used to (re)inflate the value of pre existing assets, rather than using it in creating new assets, such as new properties. its always important to also remember, a significant amount of our public debt was in fact used to bail out the financial system, and it worked, but in the mean time, we fcuked over many in the process, in particular none asset owners, i.e. the young, so, go us! this form of debt is sometimes called 'odious debt', i.e. it actually wasnt used to benefit most, and imho, should be written off!