Government Ministers are floating all sorts of horror options (medical card fees, closing hospital  beds, cutting education grants and Child Benefit, etc. etc.) while at the same time insisting this is the only alternative to income tax increases. I’m not so sure.  So I thought it might be helpful to gather [...]

This was originally written for Progressive-Economy
The Minister for Finance’s comments justifying VAT increases is deeply worrying for it evinces either considerable unfamiliarity with basic economic facts; or considerable indifference to such facts in pursuit of a particular agenda.  Here’s what he had to say on RTE (22 minutes in):
‘It (the VAT increase) will apply to everybody [...]

L’Humanite interview with Monique Pinçon-Charlot: “the rich have a money addiction that must be treated”
For sociologist Monique Pinçon-Charlot, the campaign against public deficits is an ideological weapon being used by neoliberals to do away with social rights all over the world.
Among the budgetary proposals to be discussed by the French government is a move [...]

Just to note for regular readers. I was away for a week, so only cross-posting Michael’s Notes on the Front post today. It was originally published on the 5th of July. DB.
It gets this weird - the Government is subsidising companies that are cutting their own workforce, all in the name of subsidising [...]

It’s strange how certain things stick in your mind. I remember very well reading the newspapers while on a weekend away in early October last year. It was during that bizarre time in the lead-up to the IMF/EU/ECB fiscal kidnapping and just after Olli Rehn had announced that Ireland was a low tax economy, and [...]

Given that Ireland’s corporate tax rate is in the news, it is well to get a grip on some facts in the debate.
1. Ireland’s headline tax rate of 12.5 percent is the lowest in the Eurozone. At the higher end are  Germany, France, Greece and Spain with statutory tax rates at 35 percent. Ireland comes [...]

A number of commentators have referred to the rejoicing of Fine Gael and Labour TDs (even if some were disappointed by Cabinet appointments or lack of).  There is another constituency which can also be particularly pleased - the corporate and business sectors. They have been exempted from making any contribution to repairing the public finances [...]

During the campaign, Fine Gael accused Labour of being a high-tax party, based on some artful manipulation of numbers. The fact is that is there was little difference between the two parties over the amount of taxation they proposed to raise up to 2014 (Fine Gael proposed to raise €2.7 billion while Labour intended to [...]

Today in Berlin our “Taoiseach-elect” Enda dealt in a most business-like fashion with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, described as the most powerful politician in Europe at the moment. A bullish Enda said after the meeting was over:
“I made it perfectly clear to the chancellor that, from our point of view, the corporation tax and [...]

On Prime Time Tuesday night, debating the Finance Bill, Fianna Fail’s Michael McGrath thought he was scoring a point on Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty by stating:
‘Your plan is to have 80 percent of the [fiscal] correction by increasing taxes and 20 percent by reducing spending. So without any equivocation or [...]