Mini-Budget Thread - Your Suggestions Please

Opening this thread just for your suggestions as to what should be cut/taxed and what should be spared/increased. Please keep strictly on topic as we have some other threads for general economic discussion.

Raise revenues by:

1) New national recovery bond. (borrow off the people and not the markets)
2) Drop the VAT rates to stimulate spending and reduce cross border spending.
3) Tax the shit out of smokes and booze.
4) Property tax for all non primary residences.
5) Properly Tax Horse and Dog 'industries'.
6) Introduce a third (higher) tax band of 49% for all earnings above €60,000.

Cut expenditure as follows:

1) Remove Childrens's Allowance for anyone paying the top rate of tax
2) Half all mileage and expenses payable to public servants.
3) Introduce an emergency Salary Cap of €125,000 for all public sector employees.
4) Abolish useless quangos
5) Shelf Metro North for forseeable future.
6) Statutory Redundancy for top 3 levels of management of HSE and civil service.

Am I near €5billion yet?

coc wrote:

Raise revenues by:

1) New national recovery bond. (borrow off the people and not the markets)
2) Drop the VAT rates to stimulate spending and reduce cross border spending.
3) Tax the shit out of smokes and booze.
4) Property tax for all non primary residences.
5) Properly Tax Horse and Dog 'industries'.
6) Introduce a third (higher) tax band of 49% for all earnings above €60,000.

Cut expenditure as follows:

1) Remove Childrens's Allowance for anyone paying the top rate of tax
2) Half all mileage and expenses payable to public servants.
3) Introduce an emergency Salary Cap of €125,000 for all public sector employees.
4) Abolish useless quangos
5) Shelf Metro North for forseeable future.
6) Statutory Redundancy for top 3 levels of management of HSE and civil service.

Am I near €5billion yet?

tax:

1) Drain deposits from banks?
2) Didn't work for Gordon Brown. How much are you talking? Won't be enough to stop cross border shopping in any event. Could slow necessary deflation.
3) Loads of jobs gone in pubs and restaurants already. Hit the supermarkets for below cost selling.
4) Could work. Don't want to end up with roofless houses though.
5) 11,000 employed in dogs. How are you going to pay for welfare for necessary redundancies and spin off job losses? Witht he meagre savings?
6) €60,000 is not as much as it sounds. We are talking euros not punts and after 7 years of compound inflation. What about families with children?

expenditure:

1) A direct tax on employment? Why not tax children's allowance as income for those earning more than €100K?
2) Could work - neds to be specific.
3) That is unfair and will bankrupt some people. Principle good in general though but should be taken on a case by case basis.
4) Sound-bite?
5) Not familiar enough with benefits. I think we need to look at the negative impact of cancelling projects though. A lot of spade work has already been done.
6) Sound-bite?

I don't know if you are near the €5 billion. In fact, with the VAT losses and the increased social welfare paments, I am not sure you have saved anything at all!

On the expenditure side:

1) Yes, that is a better idea, but why set a €100k threshold? Tax it all as income, applying the usual bands etc.

4) & 6) are not soundbites.

On 4) I imagine budget measures would be a little more specific, I just didn't want to deflect the debate into a wrangle over which quangos are useless. The point is we can't afford many of these 'luxuries' any more so they'll have to go.

I'm deadly serious on 6). Fire the eejits who got us into this mess and pay the stautory redundancy. Hire back the good ones under performance related contracts and hire from industry directly into the top levels of management. Many of these f*ckers are just timeservers who finally got to the top of the greasy pole. If you are at that level of responsibility you need to live under a comensurate level of accountability.

coc wrote:

....
4) Abolish useless quangos
....
6) Statutory Redundancy for top 3 levels of management of HSE and civil service.
....

Fair comments coc.
4) is good in principle but we need to identify them. The devil is in the detail. We all want to abolish useless quangos but we need to know which ones and how. Personally I think all Regulators need to be examined as none of them are working well. Financial, Communications, Energy, Taxis etc.

6) You are right that personal responsibility is at the heart of the problem. The HSE and hospitals need to be overhauled to create that personal responsibility. However, firing people is punishing them for the mistakes of those in charge of the design of the system. It is also arbitrary as good workers should be treated properly. Such arbitrariness is contrary to the fairness every person deserves.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

6) You are right that personal responsibility is at the heart of the problem. The HSE and hospitals need to be overhauled to create that personal responsibility. However, firing people is punishing them for the mistakes of those in charge of the design of the system. It is also arbitrary as good workers should be treated properly. Such arbitrariness is contrary to the fairness every person deserves.

The idea of limiting the cull to the top three layers is that they are, by and large, the very people who designed the system, at least in the case of the HSE. I agree that, in principle, arbitrary punishment is contrary to fairness, but I don't see it in terms of punishment, but rather in terms of a necessary correction. The consequences of not taking such corrective actions is that the burden will (and this is already happening) fall on children with special needs, the elderly, those with disabilities and their carers. Now that is contrary to to the fairness every person deserves.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Personally I think all Regulators need to be examined as none of them are working well. Financial, Communications, Energy, Taxis etc.

The Goodbody's report today is disappointing to the drivers, but I cannot judge either the fairness or the economic wisdom. I was very surprised to learn from a Dublin taxi driver last week that the Regulator now insists that they purchase new cars. The driver had applied to buy a 3 year-old Merc in good and safe condition and was refused permisssion. If this merely anecdotal evidence is correct, is it reasonable to think that the regulation is like the first time buyers' grant, designed to support the industry (of car dealerships this time, not builders) and not the worker or the consumer?

tonys wrote:

This idea was posted by someone over on another thread, but it's obviously a good one and posted by someone who seems to know what they're talking about, so I thought it deserved to be put here as well.

"A refund of 10% off the VAT inclusive price for designated labour intensive work carried out by tax compliant providers, who must supply a copy of up to date TCC with the invoice, otherwise no refund.

This could apply to small scale building work, home improvements, installation of energy saving equipment such as solar panels or double glazed windows and so on, car servicing, car body work, carpet cleaning and a whole lot more work carried out by small businesses and self employed providers.

* 3% VAT is better than no VAT
* Lots of work for providers + profit & labour taxes for Government.
* Encourage providers to be tax compliant.
* Help keep people in work paying tax and off the dole, saving social welfare payments."

Taxes on water to be introduced in three / six months. Flat or no rate upto the point where you start to water your garden / car / wash the dog etc.

Different rates for businesses and farmers.

Concurrently reduce VAT on water-saving equipment and cost of installation as per tonys above.

This would tax those who abuse water, give incentive to those who are interested in spending a few bob - it only takes a big tub at the side of the house for garden-watering and car washing etc.

This has to be done in the greater context of eventually cleaning out our water system, protecting the environment and eventually helping Dublin meet its water needs through rain harvesting rather than taking it from the Shannon thereby saving on a big capital expense later on.



Next year the water rates could be raised a little bit more and it might give an incentive to people to upgrade toilets, put bricks in cisterns, fix leaky pipes and taps.


Concurrently create Fás courses where younglads and lasses learn how to fix taps and leaky pipes etc. and they can then be on-call in a community for older people or the unemployed or anyone who has the will and who has leaky taps etc.. Workers would get a basic certificate towards a plumbing qualification.

As far as I know alot of areas in suburban Dublin already have water meters installed so technically they could bring in pay-per-use water charges overnight.

johnfás wrote:

As far as I know alot of areas in suburban Dublin already have water meters installed so technically they could bring in pay-per-use water charges overnight.

There are other ideas to raise revenue but I don't think this should be a great one for that. This is more of a penalty for overuse at first and simultaneously an attempt to boost an industry or part of an industry - consumption of gardening equipment thereby raising some VAT.

Over time, fuller water rates could be introduced - you don't want to crucify people who are already crippled with debt.

It would have to be set up so that in theory you could get your water from the rain 100% free if you wanted. I don't know if there are issues of health with that though (could be sorted out easily enough) ... also it would reduce the national fluoride and chlorine bills...

A DIRT tax on nappies

It is a dirty business.

Introduce Pfand deposit on plastic bottles like in Germany - returnable as the bottles are returned.

This would get some short-term revenue but would moreso create jobs by eliminating some waste. It's revenue neutral but because there would be a lag for some people before they returned their returnables the Govt. would have the excess short-term.

If a million bottles a day were bought in Ireland @ avg. €1 a bottle and the Pfand was also €1 on each bottle then the Govt. could raise as much as a million a day, short-term. Obviously as this tax is returnable the Govt. doesn't keep the money but not everyone would bring their bottles back immediately but might store them up for a month say, So initially it could raise perhaps 30 million because of the lag but it would be a measure of cutting down on waste too.

The irish have shown themselves amenable to these kinds of (conservative) ideas and anyhow we used to have this deposit before.

Pfwhat is the pfoint of pfand? We already have recycling centres in pfractically every pfarish. Pfeople who don't use them pfay through the srón pfor bintags and the like.

coc people don't have to pay for bins - they can recycle, compost, cut down, reuse, repair. You can't say you haven't the time if you get let go from work either.

On the other pfand... could ireland's IFSC change to ICSC ?

Quote :

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Nation can become ‘global hub for carbon credit trading’

IRELAND has a realistic chance of resurrecting its international financial reputation by becoming a leading global hub for carbon credit trading.

The corporate responsibility advisory group, Business in the Community Ireland (BITCI) yesterday delivered its Green Ireland: The Business of Climate Change report to Minister for the Environment John Gormley. The report was the result of last October’s forum on climate change and called for a long-term policy framework to drive Ireland’s transformation into a low carbon economy.

more ..
http://www.examiner.ie/business/idgbmhaumh/rss2/

Auditor #9 wrote:

coc people don't have to pay for bins - they can recycle, compost, cut down, reuse, repair. You can't say you haven't the time if you get let go from work either.

I agree. My pfoint is that pfand seems to be an encouragement to recycle rather than a revenue raising excercise. We already have an encouragement to recycle, in the pform of extortionate waste collection charges. I don't know about where you live, but where I live the recycling centre is like a pub on All Ireland Sunday.
On a related point though, I do wonder why the Greens don't ban all non-recyclable plastics. As far as I can tell only plastics 1 - 5 can be recycled. The rest goes to landfill or incineration. This is a criminal waste. Plastics of 6+ should just be banned for commercial packaging. Or, since we're in a budget thread, taxed into oblivion.

Good pfoints pcocf - some plastics bio-degrade too isn't that right? I suppose you can't tax 6+ plastics if they're industrial without there being an alternative.

Your recycling centre is full of people is it? Does that deter you from going there? Reducing, reusing etc. might mean you'd go there less.

Are there going to be big taxes on the old reliables and how much would that collect? 30% of the population smoke (just over a million people) ... the tax on a box of fags must be a fiver anyway at least - that's 5 or 6 million euros a day, back of the packet figures - increasing by 20c or more wouldn't get whole lot - maybe rising the tax a bit more would increase sales of nicorette short term?

What levies are they going to put on d'old reliables ?