Gerard has already moved to Belgium where taxes for the rich are generously low, he purchased a sweet little mansion there, good luck to the man, no point working very hard for nothing.

People work much much harder than this actor, for much much less money. Unfortunately for them they don’t have the opportunity to just relocate to a fancy mansion in another country.

Shane I suggest you write a strongly worded letter to your public representatives to demand measures against this outrageous injustice.
Everyone should be entitled to a fancy mansion in a foreign country no matter what their financial circumstance..

Shane
You are totally correct……so you now see the folly of the Socialist Government introducing penal tax rates for the successful ……they take their business elsewhere and you pay more!

Ya but unlike most others, Gerard has a rare skill, acting. Successful people like himself have worked exceptionally hard way harder than the masses to get where he is today.

It has nothing to do with being “successful”. The majority of wealthy people are happy to pay their fair share of taxes. However, a minority want to pay very little tax.

Really? Do u know them personally or something? If most of these wealthy folk wanted to pay higher taxes they’d actually start declaring, stop hiring financial advisors who tell them how to take advantage of loopholes, and they’d stop being tax exiles.

If the majority of high earners wanted to pay higher taxes they’d give themselves a wage

There are very few loopholes to exploit without penalties or prosecutions. Take my advice: stop reading the Irish Independent (or equivalent) and look at these government statistics translated:

1. Taxes on the top 10% wealthy are currently at a 25 year low.
2. Since the 1980’s taxes on the rich have been falling due to (a) tax breaks, (b) tax band re-adjustments

This corresponds to Ireland. However, in France, the wealthy are encouraged to pay a little more tax and yet they decide to move abroad. This is wrong, why should the ordinary French people have to pay more taxes for the wealthy? WHY?

People tend to want to pay the same tax as everyone else with the same income. They don’t want to be the loser who’s paying way more than everyone else. Of course they’d hire tax advisors. It’s human nature. You can’t let yourself be robbed.

It’s only fair that someone on €1 million should be taxed higher than someone on €10,000. The Irish people also support this in a recent poll on high earners.

Crazy? Or just Socialist?

Damocles
They are both…crazy and Socialist!
Fine Gael warned that increasing either the business tax rate or the top marginal rate of tax would seriously damage the economy and voila , what do we see in France but the same outcome as predicted here. We never seem to learn !

75% is SMALL compared to 90% in the USA in the 1950’s.

Is Tara LOONEY a spokesperson for the Fine Gael party? Perhaps that is the reason FG are loosing in the polls.

Prior to 1913 the US had no income tax and no federal reserve bank.
In 1991, Russia abandoned progressive taxation in favour of a flat rate tax and saw it’s tax revenues swell. Based on their success, several other European nations have since replicated this model.

Sean – the bottom 90% already pay the lion’s share of revenue in Ireland. No government here would enact a “flat tax” because it would result in an early election. When a government doesn’t listen to the interests of the voters, it will fall.

so rich people are like banks and politicians now, too big to be bothered to pay their fair share to the detriment of the rest of us, i love it!!

Except when France signs bilateral tax agreements with them, the rich will have to go further afield instead of simply paying their fair share.

There is a wealth distribution problem in Europe.

Switzerland no longer wants to be a tax haven. Their government recently committed to opening up new tax agreements with some countries. The Swiss have recently signed an agreement with the United States on alleged ‘tax exiles’ allowing Washington to more easily identify U.S citizens there.

In Greece, the “lagarde list” reveals the details of some Greek citizens who are allegedly using Swiss bank accounts.

Exactly.

The people that get paid a mill are the leaders and not the employees. The fact is we need them, without them many people would not have a job.

Them the facts.

The French are Not stupid. For too long, the elites have ruled France by passing tax codes in their favor. The ordinary French people are tired of paying for the lavish lifestyles of the top echelons in their society.

I think you are too immersed in your own partisan rhetoric to see the difference between rich and poor.

” Taxing the wealthy higher rates is counter productive ”

I’ve never heard a capitalist properly explain that one before. Perhaps you could explain how taxing someone progressively is “counter productive”?

certainly Mark!
1. wealthier people have greater control about how much money they can earn – if they know the government will take almost all of what they’ll earn tomorrow, they’ll rather go and play golf instead. They also won’t bother making investments, that create jobs, if there’s no incentive to do so.
2. As Mr.Depardieu’s case illustrates, if you try to tax someone who has means, they can just move somewhere else to avoid being taxed. So the French government won’t get the hundreds of thousands he would have paid had they not tried to gouge him. They only alternative is to take away his freedom to travel, and only socialists would consider going down that road.

Tim, thats some pretty dumb deducing right there. Cheers for proving marks point.

An anonymous poster calls a comment ‘dumb’ without explaining why .

That sounds like a valid critique.

Hardly crazy. The rich need to pay taxes like anyone else in the real world.

Wrong. Socialism lifts people out of poverty. It creates a more equal society. Your problem David is that you read the WSJ too much. You picked the worst possible quote from an evil woman who ended up being ousted by her own people in the end. Not to mention the fact Thatcher is an arch enemy to Irish people. It’s interesting you exposed your idol to a British capitalist. Perhaps you should consider moving to Britain and renounce your Irish passport. Nobody is stopping you.

I’m by no means a Thatcher fan and I’m perfectly aware of her flaws. I just think it’s a good quote that is pretty relevant for this issue. You might find this hard to believe, but there is a such thing as a middle ground. I’m not some right wing nut who is completely opposed to redistribution of wealth. I come from a working class family myself. By all means, I’d love to see the white collar crooks who got us into the mess that we’re in forfeit their assets to pay the rest of us back. I just think the idea of punishing every wealthy person, particularly those with the ability to move their wealth easily, just because they have it is a foolish idea. It would essentially be the law of diminishing returns in action. The act to generate more tax revenue could potentially result in the loss of the revenue they were already getting from these people by making them leave.

As for how you responded to my other post (figure I should answer it all in one post) I don’t even understand why you had a problem with that one seeing as I was actually agreeing that the 75% tax shouldn’t be a huge deal in this case seeing as it only applies to income over €1M (but alas, people are naturally greedy). Read my post again if you missed that.

It is selfish to move offshore just because you don’t want to pay taxes. Such people normally aren’t missed.

Move to Belgium? Oh yeah, until Belgium signs a TAX TREATY with France!

There is a saying: you can run but you can’t hide.

Tax the rich, Tax the rich, Tax the rich. It will solve everything blah blah blah. Change the bloody record. Socialists are all the same, tax the rich when they see people earn more then them. They shut up fairly quick when they are on a decent wage themselves. Europe needs to turn back from these socialist scam artists.

they do pay more. that’s what ‘percent’ means.

The rich don’t “pay more”. As tax figures illustrate, we have a taxation system that favors the top 10 per cent here. Tax breaks were introduced by FF, FG and LAB throughout the 80′s, 90′s and early 2000’s. For example:

- the group companies tax break
- the company car tax rebate
- the subsidies to private schools
- the “double irish arrangement” scheme…..

You can’t cut your way to prosperity. Outsourcing has been made more difficult thanks to import tariffs. Also, bi-lateral tax agreements can be signed to prevent tax avoidance by the rich. If the wealthy had their way, Irish workers would be paid $2 an hour and outsource jobs to China.

well if Irish workers could be paid 2 euros an hour they wouldn’t need to outsource jobs to China – which I don’t think they really want to do anyway, given the choice, and considering the cost of transporting most goods. But your point, Regonald, about tax agreements is important, yes that could happen, but as long as one country or group of countries holds out and allows wealthy people to live there in a low tax regime, it will be a problem until bigger countries start to use force, which would be bad we would probably agree. Even if only because, if your country has to force your citizens to live there it might be a sign that something is badly wrong. If a government increases the cost of living in your country, it can’t complain when people respond to that incentive as though it wasn’t part of their initial calculation. It’s hardly unforseeable. And considering people unpatriotic or otherwise wicked for simply responding to a government policy is the mark of a very repressive government, imo.

It wouldn’t have even been that punitive truth be told. It was only to apply to anything over €1M per annum so if someone earned, say for example, €1.3M per annum, the 75% rate would only have applied to the €300,000 that was above the first €1M and the rest would have been taxed at the various lower tax rates.

David,

You previously exposed your support for Margaret Thatcher’s unjust policies. Move to Britain and leave the rest of us alone. Do us all a favor and don’t bang the door on your way out. Give your Irish Passport back to Ireland too.

Ok genius. What if you make 900k? The next tax band would be likely 45%. Spot the problem yet?

Didn’t realise that.

45% tax would still mean a massive salary of €495,000.

Why not let people decide for themselves how much is ‘enough’?

Mark your comments are nasty. Relax. What’s wrong with the UK anyway. Thousands and thousands of us are emigrating there each year. We don’t need to hand back our passports.

If 45% tax leaves 495,000, then they’d be paying 405,000 in income tax. I pay about 5,000 but it’s the millionaires who get accused of not paying their way?

Themselves, handy number.

Equivalent to our Supreme Court Mr Socialist! Nothing but integrity there and in case you wondered ….no it cannot be fixed or arranged. The French Socialists have been found out on Constitutional grounds .

Ta brother blueshirt.

Nice wee establishment golden circle jerk of consensus that the rich are virtuous and the sansculotte vicious…now where did that lead us..

Presumably the rich elites occupy seats on the constitutional council.

Justify that Paul. So we should punish the rich because they got off their asses and made something of themselves. Wouldn’t live you in politics.

Nobody is “punishing” the rich. In times of crises, governments enact tax rises from those who can afford to pay more.