Barra Roantree: Cutting the tax paid by the children of wealthy families would be a strange priority
by wangwizard420
Barra Roantree: Cutting the tax paid by the children of wealthy families would be a strange priority
by wangwizard420
18 comments
Barra writes “I’m posting my contribution below which hopefully convinces you that the claim by Minister of State Neale Richmond TD that “it is not the wealthy in our society who are impacted by these taxes, it is the already squeezed middle” is complete nonsense.”
I’m voting for whoever makes monocles and top hats tax-free.
The Neale Richmond article in the Irish Times was vapid, fatuous, farcical, stupid, and just plain wrong on every level. It really is amazing he isn’t laughed out of public life.
He goes into the numbers but this sums it up:
> Calls to increase the CAT allowance should therefore be seen for what they are: a giveaway to a small number of people receiving unusually large gifts or inheritances.
I’m not sure what FG are at here. This is going to impact a very small amount of people, not exactly going to get a lot of votes. Maybe it’s more about the optics, helping out this hard pressed middle nonsense, most people not realising that it will not make a material difference to them.
The average house in a good part of Dublin is worth far more than the threshold to be taxed. A great many people who inherit their parents house, savings, etc, would therefore lose a chunk of it to taxation. Some of those monies were generally already taxed once.
Good luck convincing voters the same money should be taxed twice.
Inheritance tax is a tax on the middle class. This lad misses that the actual rich people don’t pay any inheritance tax as assets are protected in trusts, offshored or behind companies etc.
He also misses the absolute mess which is agricultural succession planning. Throw in a massive tax bill on a marginal farm and only Maginer will be left.
Allowing people to inherit huge sums while we tax people heavily once they pass 40k in income is grossly unfair. It embeds generational wealth and means very few people from poor families can build wealth no matter how hard they work. I’ve very little sympathy for people inheriting million euro houses and being “forced” to sell them and pocketing hundreds of thousands instead.
Instead of cutting inheritance taxes (which I think are fine where they are), I would like to see better options for workers to build wealth:
* Move the 40k tax band higher, or introduce a middle tax band
* Double or quadruple the CGT allowance
* Get rid of deemed disposal on ETFs and all the other malarkey, at least for smaller investors
* Introduce an ISA type savings scheme
And I think it’s absurd to see “Left-wing” parties supporting cutting inheritance tax, and we should be asking whether the individuals involved stand to inherit expensive properties in nice parts of Dublin.
Death tax is bullshit anyway. Pay inheritance tax on a house already paid for using money that was also taxed.
Now large estates that have been handed down through centuries should pay but people who worked hard to buy a house shouldn’t have their children burdened with a fake debt when they die.
Inheritance tax is bollocks. If my parents leave me a house worth €400k, they paid for that out of their post tax income. The asset didn’t fall out of the sky by magic.
Most people end up having to sell their inheritance to cover the tax bill.
The state are just coming back around for a second dip into the cookie jar.
Surely there’s a way to reform tax without benefiting the rich
So a few statistics courtesy of the CSO:
>36% of households in Ireland have received an inheritance
>The median value was €80,200
>And the median value of inheritance from parent to child was €100,600
The tax free allowance is €335,000. Therefore, you need to receive in excess of 3x the median inheritance from a parent to pay any tax. And in fact, because this is done on a household basis in many cases you’d have spouses receiving inheritance from both sides of the family, so arguably the median inheritance is 6x lower than the tax free allowance.
People getting hot and bothered about inheritance tax are mainly never going to pay any of it.
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-itw/intergenerationaltransferofwealth2020/keyfindings/
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Inheritance tax is straight up theft. Money is not some abstract value, it only has value because it was traded for labour. If you work all your life to buy a property or build wealth, you have been taxed 3 separate times on it as income(PAYE, PRSI and USC), if you then buy property you pay stamp duty and if it’s a new build 13% vat. The government has already got its pound of flesh from you. You should be able to pass on the products of a lifetime of labour to your kids, without the state sticking it’s hand in the pot again
Rich people don’t pay inheritance tax . This is a tax targeting the cohort that is above average but not rich. Just like every tax in Ireland.
If there’s spare money, they need to jettison the 52% tax rate for once and for all, make ETFs more attractive and put someone in charge of the civil service who will impose serious efficiencies (I assume this will cost in the short term).
Inheritance tax shouldn’t exist for working class families. But ofcourse, the state cannot allow working class people to have decent lives. They must protect capital for the rich society
He’s right. This paragraph sums it up:
“Calls to increase the CAT allowance should therefore be seen for what they are: a giveaway to a small number of people receiving unusually large gifts or inheritances”
Well written and researched article, well done to the author.
You should be taxed more on what is handed to you and less on what is actually earned. Why should a rich kid pay less tax than a neurosurgeon?
Nice contribution. Ignoring the fact that it’s a tax only paid by the wealthiest, it’s always extremely frustrating the way inheritance tax is always framed as a tax on the deceased, not a tax on the recipient. It’s kinda academic but obviously a dead person has no use for money and can’t pay tax. It’s not a tax for passing on money you’ve earned. It’s a tax for receiving money you haven’t. The framing of this debate is massively important to the way the tax is percieved.
Why is inheritance tax less moral than income tax?