Government defends tax breaks for high-earning tech workers

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Louise O'Reilly, TD has called for the tax breaks for high net-worth individuals to be abolished.

The Government has strongly defended controversial tax breaks for "cosseted" highly paid workers in big tech firms, saying calls to abolish them would damage the economy.

Ministers have said tax breaks for multi-millionaires including subsidising private school fees are necessary, saying Sinn Féin calls to abolish them would “gamble” away our economic security.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Trade Minister Robert Troy have insisted that these tax reliefs for people earning between €75,000 and over €1m are needed to secure foreign inward investment.

Special Assignee Relief

In a bid to attract highly skilled workers, the Special Assignee Relief Programme put in place tax breaks on high incomes for up to five years.

Sinn Féin, as reported by the Irish Examiner on Tuesday, has told big tech companies that it wants to abolish the SARP programme.

Such tax breaks have cost the Exchequer up to €42m a year.

Mr Donohoe said the programme keeps “certain kinds of jobs” in Ireland, and getting rid of it would be an economic “gamble”.

“If Sinn Féin is willing to change something like this, it points to me that they are willing to gamble with our economic security – at a time when we already have plenty of risks,” he said.

What we really have to be concerned about is what does this mean for our economy? What does it mean for jobs in our economy?

"And what does that mean for jobs in Ireland, at a time that which we are seeing real economic risks develop elsewhere in the world?”

Mr Troy said Ireland had 270,000 people employed by foreign multinationals across 1,700 companies contributing €28bn to our economy.

He said SARP is one part of our enterprise policy to help attract and retain multinationals in our economy. It's a policy to support multinationals attract highly skilled mobile workers.

He said “This is a very important policy in terms of broad of broader support and to our economy, and ensuring that we can have the necessary funds” to allow the Government deliver its €6.7bn budget day package next month.

However, Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly called for the tax breaks for high net-worth individuals to be abolished.
She said the people who benefit from this are people who earn up to €1m a year and includes tax relief for private school fees for trips home.

“This is a form of tax relief that is not available to any other worker in this state. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis now and I don't use the term crisis lightly we're in the middle of a cost of living crisis,” she said.

The SARP is up for review before the end of the year and Sinn Féin look set to make this a major line of attack in the coming months as the cost of living crisis continues.

The government would be irresponsible to propose extending this tax relief. I don't see any reason why a cosseted select group of workers should be picked out and given this special form of tax relief.

According to the most recent data, 50 executives earning between €1m and €3m benefited from SARP in 2019, with significant tax write-offs available on a large chunk of their income.