TD wage cuts and wealth tax in SF budget ideas
The party hit out at other parties who “poke fun” at their Budget proposals, and said Labour, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are part of a “consensus for cuts”.
Its proposed adjustment would be made up of two-thirds taxes and one-third spending cuts.
Sinn Féin is the only party proposing a range of stimulus measures, instead of just cuts, and wants to take €7bn from the National Pension Reserve Fund for a €7.59bn national investment and stimulus plan, including a €2bn employment stimulus for next year.
It’s also the only party which does not adhere to the plan to reduce the Budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2014.
It believes extending the deadline to 2016 would inflict less damage on the economy.
“If there was sense in cuts, the last three budgets and the emergency measures taken would have shown the type of result that would have been beneficial to the people. It hasn’t done that,” said party president Gerry Adams.
Finance spokesman Arthur Morgan was unable to give a projected rate of growth on which to base these figures, but when pressed he said it would be around 3% a year towards the end of the six-year programme.
The document, There is a Better Way proposes savings for 2011 by:
* Cutting TDs’ salaries 20% and cutting ministers’ salaries 40%.
* Introducing a third rate of 48% tax on individual incomes over €100,000.
* Standardising a range of discretionary tax reliefs to raise €1.1bn.
* Imposing an income- linked wealth tax of 1% on all assets over €1m, including property but excluding ‘working’ farmland.
* Capping salaries for civil servants or those in semi-state companies at €100,000.
Mr Adams said it was “obscene” that any politician or civil servant should earn up to half a million a year.
“Its absolutely ridiculous that people here are earning more than the president of the USA,” he said.
Mr Morgan, admitted that capping public sector salaries might have a “drag effect” on tax revenue.
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