Today in the Sunday Independent the occasional commentator, sometime property developer and fulltime corkman Eddie Hobbs has what my old mam used to describe as “an awful screed“. She was from Corlk…
As is often the case with Eddie there are some solid points made but its as usual hard to find these within an overblown emotive and bitter tone.
His central thesis is that the state is oppressing us. Us here seems to be SME owners. Its hard to tell with his wild uncontrolled gunfire…
Clicking on the chart will give you a page from Eurostate which is the latest cross national comparative data on tax structure in the EU. The chart is for ireland.
Its compared with GDP because guess what – thats the international benchmark. WE have decided that we want to shelter a MNC sector and so complain we want to use GDP. On that Eddie and I are at one. IT wont, shouldnt and isnt washing with our partners.
So, lets see. The rankings are 1 = highest.
We are very much towards the bottom with regard to tax paid by employers. We are very low with regard to the % of tax collected by indirect taxation (VAT). We are very low in terms of business capital taxes. Etc etc. A whole herd of sacred cows that gallop through the national debate are turned into hamburger by the facts.
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