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Taxing conundrum
By Joe Horgan
THE government recently announced that a number of extremely wealthy individuals manage to pay no tax at all and that this is completely within the law. These are individuals with huge incomes. Pillars of society. Respected members of the community. They earn a fortune and are beyond the financial calls that beset every other Irish person.
Indeed in this way they contribute far less to the economic life of Irish society than an ordinary person on a half decent wage. Apparently the system has in-built escape clauses and loopholes for those with enough money and enough accountants to find them and exploit them.
Of course some of these people do fall foul of the law. In 2003 there were six successful prosecutions for serious tax evasions, that is the very wealthy who were found to have offended in their pursuit of those loopholes. These prosecutions resulted in fines and one suspended prison sentence. So no one it seems is above Irish law.
The government is also continuing through the auspices of various tribunals to claw back some of the money that was hidden from it by, once more, those with the extreme wealth to do so.
In 2003, even though the amounts are now falling off from the early days of investigation, the government still managed to bring in e3.4 million from such things as those bogus offshore bank accounts. So six prosecuted and over e3 million recovered. It seems as if, pillars of the community or not, that the government is intent on apprehending the dishonest.
At the other end of the financial spectrum it most certainly is. At the same time as e3.4 million was recovered and just six people were successfully prosecuted for serious, hard cash fraud, with just one suspended prison sentence, 28 unemployed people were sent to prison for social security fraud that amounted to around e1 million.
Now I’m no great mathematician but I would say that those figures look fairly unbalanced. If 28 Irish people miserable enough to defraud social security were sent to prison how were only six defrauding the government of serious cash sent home to their luxury pads.
If the litany of fraud that floods out of the tribunals results in no imprisonments how come a forged dole cheque does. Is this the inherent, desirable inequality Michael McDowell and the government want?
Over recent years much has changed in Irish society and along with this much has changed in the study of Irish society. Revisionists of Irish history came along and challenged the accepted story of this country. There was more to it they said than 800 years of struggle, than British oppression, Irish suffering, noble rebels. Much of this was refreshing and enlightening. It hinted at a growing maturity in our society. Of course it was also clear that many of those pushing this new history were only really interested in replacing one orthodoxy with another. Instead of exclusively stirring stories of the fight for Irish independence we had the likes of Ruth Dudley Edwards portraying Ulster Unionists as the only fair minded, level-headed people on the island and every Republican as evil incarnate. It wasn’t a redressing of the balance but a new set of prejudices. Still it was essentially to be welcomed. If it created a clearer picture of our past it was only to be applauded. It wouldn’t remove famine deaths, the flood of emigration, the bitter fights for an Irish state but if it painted them in a different light that could get us nearer the elusive, unattainable truth it was only to be welcomed.
Further it seems fairly arguable that the overall greening of Irish history has actually done us a disservice. In rightfully ensuring that we remembered what previous generations sacrificed and experienced a sea of green covered everything. Some fairly large cracks in Irish society were plastered over when it was said that we were all on the one road singing along. The truth is we never were. The truth is that there were always those getting away with yachts full of cash and those going to prison for a few quid. If we were all on the same boat how come some stayed at home growing fat and wealthy while others found that their road only led to the boat. If the mainstream Irish political parties are some of the most conservative in Europe perhaps it was because of the fact that even years after independence the elite were able to blame all the economic and social failings on the departed power across the Irish Sea. If we were all on the same road why did some raise families on the tight redbrick streets of Britain and others on the leafy lanes of Cork and Dublin?
Of course no government, certainly not this one, is ever going to try and seriously answer that one. They are not likely to start shaking the edifice of their own power by asking questions that could seriously undermine it. After all this is a regime that can spend e50 million on a questionable electronic voting system that had most independent commentators saying would be open to widespread abuse as in George Bush in Florida and then scrap it anyway as it was proven to be of no use. e50 million. Is that not criminal?
Then on the news this morning there was another item about the seriously under-funded health service, a service that could really do with that e50 million or some of the tax from the incomes of those extremely wealthy individuals who are above and beyond us. An elderly man who lived within minutes of a county hospital died after he had to travel to a neighbouring county for life saving treatment that was no longer available at the hospital next door to him. Is that, I wonder, what they mean by desirable inequality?
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