Beancounters are as high as kites with latest budget ideas

Kite-flying is in vogue — or at least the version that throws up various ways to extract more tax from all of us.

With Budget 2018 due to be outlined in a couple of months, a variety of supposedly clever ideas have been circulating. One was a suggestion to tax family homes, and another was to lift Vat on tourism up from 9% to 13.5%. Both are barmy.

For generations, government policy in Ireland has been to encourage and support house purchasing as a means of establishing a home and a way to create a financial nest egg for an individual family.