NoRegretsCoyote
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I am saying that the same rules should apply to all. A PAYE worker and a company owner should have age limits and not annual limits.
In reality what you are doing with a pension is deferring the liability until drawdown. This is described however as tax relief, as if some kind of gift is being granted. For many people with low incomes it just looks like high-income people are not paying tax at all.
In the late 2000s there was a lot of public anger about high-income individuals paying very low effective rates of tax through use of reliefes:
The State's top 50 earners paid less than 5 per cent in taxes, according to the latest analysis of tax records by the Revenue Commissioners released yesterday.
According to the survey, three of the wealthiest Irish paid nothing at all in taxes, while 45 paid between 0 and 5 per cent in 2003, and 17 more paid less than 10 per cent.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen last night said that curbs he had introduced to the tax code in the 2006 budget will reduce the ability of high earners to cut their tax bills. However, Labour TD, Joan Burton said the figures, which do not count Irish tax exiles such as Denis O'Brien, JP McManus and Dermot Desmond, were "a shocking indictment" of Fianna Fáil's taxation record.
If implemented, your scheme would immediately generate headlines like: "taxpayer pays zero income tax on €1m income" as someone who has had a good year tops up their pension late in their career.
It's a political non starter Brendan.