"Soaking the rich, again"

Gerry Canning said:
I think we agree that the word (RICH) means little in isolation.
I think we agree that the nominal rich ie over k100 are not rich/wealthly in any meaningful way.

I think we have 3 camps ,
The under k100 who mistakingly believe that k100 = rich & wealthy .
The k100 people who work hard to provide for their families ,who by no means can be called wealthy.

Those who inherited wealth by virtue of birth .
Am inclined to believe these inheritors should be (soaked) ( its the pinkie in me !)
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There's a fourth camp. Those on 100k who live modestly and have no financial worries and consider themselves rich. They don't have 161 Mercs or mansions in D4 but realize how good they have it when they look at the rest of the world.
 
PGF2016 said:
There's a fourth camp. Those on 100k who live modestly and have no financial worries and consider themselves rich. They don't have 161 Mercs or mansions in D4 but realize how good they have it when they look at the rest of the world.
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When you look at the rest of the world nearly all of us in Ireland have it good.
 
Hope this is the right place to put this post.
Talking about the 10 or 100 richest people in the world and, let's say they own 99% of the world's total wealth? Suppose they decided to liquidate all of their assets and keep them as cash? No doubt there would be buyers and it would then become impossible to determine those cash rich 100 people for future wealth purposes. I'm guessing there would be a new 100 richest people in the world and on and on and on, etc if they decided to do the same. Does it make any difference at all about having rich people, or who/what they are, etc? There's always going to be one human with more than the next human and vica versa.
 
Could we clarify what we are discussing?

Cormac Lucey’s article is based on a report, 2 weeks earlier in the Sunday Times that mentioned that Fine Gael were planning to introduce new taxes for people earning €100,000 or more - though it had not yet decided on the income level.

This is in the context of the abolition of USC.

There is no information about this new tax, although an article in the Irish Independent dated 15 January last suggests that it will be in the form of increased PRSI contributions and that the increase will be considerably less than the current 8% USC rate.
 
It's all political rhetoric. This group of so called wealthy people have actually borne the brunt of the emergency taxes. Money has been given back to the so called middle income and low income earners. The €70k plus brigade deserve a break also.
 
Because nothing has happened to either tax or USC for income over €70k!

Tax went down by 1% to 40% and USC went up from 7% to 8%.

That isn't paying less.
 
But the article is not about the 2016 Budget.

It is about the eventual abolition of USC.

Higher earners would have the most to gain when it is abolished.

Fine Gael, if re-elected are proposing a modest increase, probably in PRSI for higher earners. They haven't yet decided who higher earners are.
 
Sophrosyne said:
Nevertheless, that was the context of the article.
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If they abolish it they will replace it with something else.
There should be no increased in spending or cuts in taxes until we have our public finances back in order and a large decrease in our debt levels. The economy is growing and doesn't need any stimulus.
 
I just referenced the context of the newspaper article, without expressing any opinion on its merit.
 
Front page of today's Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/news/poli...uring-public-spending-over-tax-cuts-1.2508863

Mr Noonan said the USC abolition would cost €4 billion in gross terms, but this would be offset by a clawback mechanism on salaries over €100,000."
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That's going to be quite some clawback mechanism. Total income of those earning 100K+ in 2013 revenue statistics was about €19B. 108,000 tax cases earning 100K+ so 10.8B of the 19B is 'under 100K' and the balance (8.1B) is from that part of salary above 100K. So he'll need to get 4B 'clawback mechanism tax' from 8.1B of income - a tax rate of an additional 49% on income over 100K... [I make that a marginal rate of 100% for PAYE and 104% for the self-employed!]

I hope this has been badly reported - I would be very disappointed in Michael Noonan if that's what he said/implied. Almost SinnFein-esque in its 'sure we'll just schlep it on to the rich, it'll be grand'.

[Edited to fixed calcs]
 
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