Why I am leaving Ireland in 2019

theguzman wrote: »

Lets say you are paying 40% Income Tax, whatever you spend in your life is taxed at 23%, VAT, plus a whole host of all other taxes along the way of your life any savings has DIRT, then when you come to die and bequeath whatever you saved or had in property it all to whoever it will be taxed at 33%.

If over the course of your life everything was accounted for you will find the tax burden is damn well over 70% and heading towards 80%. And this is not accounting for all the other costs because of inept Governance in Ireland such as effective Double medical taxation where Private Health Insurance is necessary, Cartel Car Insurance Providers; What is happening is a total and utter disgrace.

If you manage to gather €1m over your life (realistically more) the state will get their hands on far too much of it.

Most food is exempt from VAT, certainly the core foodstuffs like dairy, meat, fish, fruit and vegetables etc. Other big household bills like gas and electricity are 13.5% VAT not 23%.

DIRT applies to the interest accrued on the savings, not the savings itself. Fair few misconceptions in that post.

Geuze wrote: »

I do this all the time, part of my job.

Total tax in 2017 = 68,568m

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/gfsa/governmentfinancestatisticsoctober2018/

Total income in Ireland = GDP = 294,110m

Tax as % of GDP = 23.3%, very low tax level

Now, GDP is not a good measure of Irish incomes, so we use GNI* instead = 181,182m

Tax as % of GNI* = 38%

This adds light to the debate on here and congratulations on your brief post which is something that needs to be highlighted - Ireland is in the middle of the pack in relation to overall tax take once you take out the effect of mulitnational activity in the economy. The reason you want to do that is that multinational have sales in Ireland which raise the GDP ( national income ) level, but they have no costs so it distorts the figures, making it look like we produce all this stuff, when all we have is multinational making sales here but no expenses.


Heres my tuppence worh of reason the Irish economy is uniquely distorted, to add to everyone elses opinion:


Public Service wages here are higher than in other countries relative to the average wages. Public service workers are paid 120% of their counterparts in the private sector when you add in pensions etc. In other countries, specifically the UK, Public Servants are typically paid 80% of private sector workers. This is pre-recession stuff so the gap may be narrower now, but will probably go back to these levels once pay restoration goes through.



This creates a relatively wealthy middle class cohort who are comfortable, it leads to the stability of Irish society as a whole. These are the sons and daughters of the small farmers children. There is nothing wrong with these people, I have nothing against them.


In the UK, teachers, nurses and police and other public servants are paid a lot less relative to their counterparts in the Private Sector.



There is a social welfare class in Ireland who are the bottom 20%, and I wouldnt like to have to survive on what they try to live on. Social welfare is far better here than in the UK, and again I have no problem with that. The UK system produces shocking poverty and deprivation, coupled with their very low social mobility leading to human set-aside on a massive scale.


I prefer to think of social welfare as a wage subsidy. Plenty of people know someone who is on Social Welfare but who does a bit of painting or handyman work on the side. They can afford to work for low daily rates because of the social welfare they receive.


50 years ago there wasn't the same option for all of this Unmarried Mothers Allowance and Deserted Wive etc because the church and society at large forced people to get married to co-habitate, and forced them to stay together, whether they liked it or not. And who would want to go back to that??


Anyway I'm relatively happy for this state of affiars to continue, I think most public servants are decent people who deserve good wages, and decent conditions and we should not turn Ireland in to a minimum wage economy to suit large multinationals. People that live here spend their money in Ireland thereby generating activity in the economy and paying their taxes.

cnocbui wrote: »

I'm originally from Australia, so in my case I have lived elsewhere so my knowledge base and frames of reference are pretty deep. It's not a case of imagining a difference that doesn't exist.

There are immense costs to living in Ireland people who haven't lived elsewhere probably don't even think to consider.

Heating. Ireland's average annual temperature is 10°C. That means if you want to live at a more comfortable 20°C you are going to pay through the nose for that luxury. Average anual temperature in Sydney is around 20°C i belive, so you are saving a lot there if you have a large stand alone house in Ireland.

Legal mess: Ireland's so called legal system is dysfunctional and I suspect that is deliberate. If you want to buy or sell a house here you have to get a lawyer and it costs around 6 times as much as just getting conveyancer in Australia.
Same goes for anything else legal. In Australia you can DIY your own divorce, here it's a living and costly nightmare. I once asked a lawyer here why it was such a mess, and his typically cute reply was to blame the British as the system was inherited from them. Funny thing is, Australia also inherited the same system and the Queen is still! the head of state, yet they managed to repair the mess.

The government here is very 'cute' about imposing living costs - like the legal mess - on people to subsidise businesses. The requirement for a BER certificate is a classic. There is no free option for a home owner to declare the lowest BER rating voluntarily, you still have to pay for that.

Another cute would be needing to pay to get a surveyor in on just about every single property transaction to make sure the boundaries are properly defined - WTF?

Want to avail of the solar panel subsidy? Well you can forget about saving some money with a bit of DIY as the grant only goes to registered installers.

I don't have direct experience with the insulation grant but I'll bet that is the same.

Then there's the NCT, a nice little earner that one. Toll roads like the M50 which was paid off donkeys ago.

Car insurance in this country is a mess and a scam.

Seemingly every facet of life in this country has costs deliberately engineered in as either taxes or to guarantee work to someone.

I notice this stuff because i have lived somewhere where it doesn't happen, it's not a trick of the psyche.

Did you know that in Australia, if you need to get an accountant to do your tax return, that's a legitimate tax deduction. You will even be allowed to take into account inflation when computing capital gains.

I am not saying Ireland is perfect its far from, that was not my point. I would look at the uk and the genuinely free first and second level education and the NHS and wonder why we cant do it.

theguzman wrote: »

You really must have no idea about the middle east and quite frankly I find it very condescending. Qatar and Dubai are not Saudi Arabia, even Saudi Arabia is liberalising now due to economic pressure and Oil is declining in economic importance there, westerners are now able to travel to Saudi Arabia as Tourists for the first time, and it a country I will certainly be travelling to also.

Most things can be done in these countries, the key is discretion and showing respect to the host nation. I can 100% guarantee you there is plenty homosexuality through the middle-east and the repressive nature of Islam actually encourages it and there would a higher percentage of Homosexuals there than this country. Alcohol can be consumed in Qatar and UAE, extra-Martial relations and sex outside of marriage is widely practised. If a person is ever in Thailand you will Arabic men are a huge proportion of the clientele of Transgender Ladyboy prostitutes.

White Western Men are held in high regard and a blind eye turned to alot of things, out of sight out of mind, what is not tolerated is the typical Irish loutish behaviour of acting like a total eejit blind drunk and then thinking everyone else is wrong except himself and thinking his sh1t don't stink. Both countries are very safe and the people are wealthy and respectful, most of the image people have of headchoppers and madrasses is attributable to the disgraceful and misogynistic culture from Pakistan.

In other words you wouldn't have minded living in 1950s Ireland. :rolleyes:

I always marvel how some people, and we hear this argument all the time when discussing islamic Middle Eastern nations' cultures and freedoms, play it that these nations aren't that bad at all and sure they have lots of homosexuality, pre marital sex, drinking, etc whilst at the same time mentioning how it is all very discrete and behind closed doors.

That is Ireland in the 30s, 40, 50s or even up to 80s.

And the fact you can say with a straight face that Saudi Arabia is liberalising at the same time as they are butchering their journalists in foreign countries and engaging in wholesale slaughter next door.

FFS you then lambast the "disgraceful and misogynistic culture from Pakistan."

BTW the total eejit isn't the guy stumbling around blind drunk, it is ....

Here's another deliberate imposed cost - Irish plumbing. The pipe size is fractionally different so as to make it incompatible with UK plumbing pipes and fittings. Why did they stop there - why not change the spacing on the prongs on electrical plugs and sockets to make those incompatible with the UK, while you are at it? That would have been another good little earner for may.

You're deluded if you think that life in other countries is better than here or that you won't encounter any problems or that you will be wealthier or necessarily happier but good luck.

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

I think that's more of a holdover from the imperial / metric system of measurement.

No it isn't, it's straight out protectionism originally designed to feather bed Irish manufacturers.

How about the Netherlands? Have heard good things.

There is this article quoting a Credit Suisse report; struggles of what they call "unlucky millenials" are quite common (especially in North America)
https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/global-wealth-inequality-is-even-worse-than-we-thought-millennials-are-the-new-peasants

The Credit Suisse report summarizes, “Millennials are doing less well than their parents at the same age, especially in relation to income, home ownership and other dimensions of well- being assessed in this report. While Millennials are more educated than preceding generations…we expect only a minority of high achievers and those in high- effectively overcome the 'millennial disadvantage.'"

- If OP is same generation, this can be a risk by default, everywhere they would go.