Water charges (or levies or taxes) will come up the agenda and no doubt there will be considerable confusion as to what they are intended for: incentivise ‘efficient use of water’ or cover the cost of water provision. These are not necessarily intertwined; one may incentivise efficient use and not recover costs and vice-versa.
What is [...]

The Government has a plan. And, yes, you should be worried. The Government’s approach to fiscal stabilisation - namely, a deflationary approach - is often portrayed as ‘the only option’. Of course, it isn’t. There are other approaches, in particular those based on boosting investment and output in order to grow employment and, so, the [...]

In the last post, I suggested that some of the arguments regarding the relative poverty measurement were starting to be answered. Now let’s start some new arguments - but, as always, in a positive way; namely, how much tax do those on high incomes pay and is it enough or too much.
For some time, many [...]

The Government announced that the 2010 budget would be the worst and that in subsequent years the level of fiscal contractions - either in pubic expenditure cuts or tax increases - would be much less than previously projected. In other words, the worst is over. You could hear a national sigh of relief. You could [...]

The discussion on Frontline last night at some points bordered on the surreal. Take the discussion on taxation. The question was posed - how high would tax have to rise in order to generate €4 billion tax revenue (as opposed to cutting €4 billion). The first thing that struck me was - why was this [...]

In European terms, local taxation in Ireland is almost non-existent. The EU-15 average local tax take is 4.9 percent of GDP; in Ireland its 0.8 percent of GNP. Even Luxembourg, half the size of the Dublin metropolitan area and its population, has a larger local taxation base than all of Ireland. So I was interested [...]

On Prime Time last night Micheal Taft discussed the recommendations of the brand new Commmission on Taxation report and alternative taxation measures with tax lawyer Suzanne Kelly.
If you missed it, or if you want to watch it again (and you’re an Irish resident) it is available on the RTE player. Click the link on What [...]

The Government now has its bookends. On the expenditure side, the McCarthy Report; on the taxation side, the Commission Report. Now we can stack the economy between the two and . . . squeeze. The only problem is that one of the bookends may not be so reliable. Indeed, it may fall off the bookshelf. [...]

Another milestone report, the Commission on Taxation this time, and another flood of news reports parsing it all for information greedy news consumers and citizens who are no doubt bewildered by the changes that the reports suggests, a good chunk of which may well be imposed upon their taxable income in the forthcoming budget.
As you’d [...]

John McHale of NUI Galway has produced an outline for a fiscal plan. It is well worth reading. It’s a serious treatment. It’s also an unnerving treatment. For it has the capacity to wreck the Exchequer’s finances with little ‘stimulating’ effect on the economy.
On the way to presenting his fiscal plan John makes some highly [...]