Richest avoid paying €373m in tax by taking advantage of reliefs
The top 387 of these earners took home €345m that year alone.
The 56 tax reliefs allowed the rich to write off investments in areas including tourism, town renewal, mining, and health.
In 2010, the most lucrative shelter available was for investment in hotels and holiday homes. This allowed 495 people to avoid paying €113m in tax through two separate relief options.
Separately, carrying forward unused reliefs from previous years allowed 202 people to reduce their tax exposure by €45m.
Income from nursing homes and residential centres allowed more than 100 investors cut their tax bill by €17m.
Investors in companies and partnerships avoided €10m in liabilities because they were able to discount the money they ploughed in to take a stake in business. And €20m of profits from artistic endeavours was kept out of Revenue’s reach.
The figures from Revenue were contained in the appendices of a report on the reduction of tax loopholes for high earners.
The report examined how much extra tax was raised by introducing, and subsequently increasing, restrictions on the coverage of these perks.
A Revenue crackdown has collected an additional €41m from the high income figures in 2010 and an increase in the number of eligible people from 452 to 1,544.
The statistics show the 387 people earning over €400,000 paid €107m in tax. Sixty-eight of these people took home more than €1m in the year. Due to the restrictions they together paid €46m in tax out of combined income of about €148m.
The restrictions are graduated and begin to take effect at incomes of €125,000.
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