{"id":150522,"date":"2025-10-29T00:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/150522\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T00:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:42:07","slug":"perrins-middle-class-irish-youre-taxed-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/150522\/","title":{"rendered":"PERRINS: Middle class Irish? You’re taxed to death"},"content":{"rendered":"

No sooner had the ink dried on my weekend masterpiece<\/a> proposing departmental reform in the Irish state and pointing out the outrageous tax burden imposed on the middle\u2013class, than the Irish Independent reported<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIreland ranked among worst countries for income tax burden on workers.\u201d Shocking!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Independent reports, \u201cIreland has been ranked among the worst of developed countries for its personal tax system.\u201d An international think-tank, the Tax Foundation, has rated Ireland 37th out of 38 countries on individual taxes. Do you know what country is at 38? Korea.<\/p>\n

The Washington based Tax Foundation found that on individual tax ratings of OECD countries the UK is about middle of the table. And it has a socialised health system. Ireland ranks second to last, after self\u2013described socialist Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Even evil Israel is 7th\u00a0from last.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirector at Chartered Accountants Ireland Cr\u00f3na Clohisey said, \u201cThe ranking for Ireland in terms of income tax is stark.\u201d She said the challenge for the Government was our reliance on high-income earners for the bulk of our income tax revenues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system currently places a\u00a0disproportionate tax burden on middle-income earners<\/strong>, with the 40pc tax rate applying at just \u20ac44,000 \u2013 below the average industrial wage.\u201d<\/p>\n

This means the so\u2013called right of centre coalition of FF and FG have been ramping up the tax burden on the middle \u2013 class earners while in government. What exactly is the point of them? Can someone please explain to me, slow learning Laura. This is in addition to VAT at a whopping 23%.<\/p>\n

We are also told, \u201cAlmost 30% of earners in this country pay no income tax or universal social charge (USC). This works out at around one million workers.\u201d Although it is very important to make sure low paid work, pays and certainly pays more than staying on benefits, it does not follow that middle \u2013 class earners must get hammered. Also if nearly a million workers are not paying the universal social charge then you want to just rename it the middle\u2013class punishment tax for that\u2019s what it is. It doesn\u2019t sound very universal to me if over 1m workers aren\u2019t paying it.<\/p>\n

This is where my new single Department of Finance comes in with the guiding principle being\u00a0What would Thatcher do?\u00a0If Thatcher wouldn\u2019t have done it, then it doesn\u2019t get done. Some people in the comments section of that\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0got a bit offended there with the use of Thatcher, to which I say, engage your brain.<\/p>\n

Thatcher or a similar once in a generation conviction politician is what Ireland requires right now. We desperately need someone who can drive through reform, reduce the size of the state and sees the economic merit and morality in a property owning, middle \u2013 class.<\/p>\n

(Thatcher gets her make \u2013 over in The Iron Lady.\u00a0I\u2019ll never be one of them,\u00a0she lamented. Exactly.)<\/p>\n

As I explained before, the thing with Thatcher is that she had a vision and she didn\u2019t care what the papers or many in her party said. When she was driving through desperately needed reform in Britain including reducing the power of the unions, reducing the outrageous tax rates some over 80%, and introducing privatisation of State owned industries, a lot of big\u2013wig economists wrote to the Times of London denouncing her policies. It seems leaving the bodies unburied, the bins uncollected and the lights off as they were in the 1979 Winter of Discontent was just the new normal for these economists. She faced them down, she faced them all down declaring: you turn if you want to, the lady\u2019s not for turning.<\/p>\n

The thing about Thatcher is that she stood firmly for the middle\u2013class, the daughter of the grocer who lived above the shop. She crawled her way to the top of the Tory party at a time when it was dominated by the toffs, the aristocrats who didn\u2019t care too much for the middle\u2013class and their thrifty ways. They cared even less \u00a0about the working\u2013class. She brought them all to heel, every last one. We could do with that here.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine Simon Harris actually standing up for the interests of those who vote for FG in a similar way? No. Can you imagine him cutting the funding to the outrageous number of NGOs and Fintan O\u2019Toole and rest of the lads were just going to have to suck it up. Of course not. I don\u2019t even know what the Taoiseach stands for other than failure so I can\u2019t be bothered with him. Neither Harris or Martin have any courage or convictions and that\u2019s what irks me the most.<\/p>\n

Bleeding the middle\u2013class dry is immoral. The tax burden should be reduced and it does not have to be reduced off the backs of the working\u2013class either. You just have to reduce the vested interests, IPAS centres, the NGOs and the ridiculous number of state bodies that now exist such that nothing gets done.<\/p>\n

The latest on the Children\u2019s Hospital fandago is that \u201cthe amount of money spent on legal fees, litigation and defending claims by the board of the new national children\u2019s hospital rose sharply from \u20ac2 million in 2023 to more than \u20ac6 million in 2024.\u201d What nonsense is this?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not here to be popular. I\u2019m just here to tell some brutal truths. You listen if you want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No sooner had the ink dried on my weekend masterpiece proposing departmental reform in the Irish state and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,2190,179,13,14,6,11,12,24958,15,16,5,4520,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-150522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-laura-perrins","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-tax","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115454682230703593","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}