Taxpayers claim €11bn in tax breaks each year

TAXPAYERS claim more than €11 billion a year in tax breaks — 20% of the total tax-take — mostly employee tax credits and pension and housing reliefs.

In a paper to the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) at the University of Michigan, TCD economist Micheál Collins and chartered accountant Mary Walsh found that there are 131 separate tax breaks in the Irish taxation code and that the Department of Finance has no data on exactly how much tax is foregone in as result of 42 of the breaks.

“Overall, some form of data is available for 89 of the 131 tax expenditures in the Irish system (68%) — for the other 42 expenditures no ex-post or ex-ante costing or estimates exists,” the report states.