Pills and perks: how addicted are the doctors?

THE staff discount which makes my house insurance policy just about competitive with the outside world got BIKed (benefit-in-kind) recently, making it no longer competitive, and come the next renewal I’ll vote with my feet.

I watched with interest last Monday night’s RTÉ Primetime report on the perhaps inappropriate relationship between GPs and drug companies, and how the company-supplied junkets might be interpreted by some as bribery, and how best, perhaps, to sever this link.

Do/should the GPs not pay BIK on all of these industry-supplied perks?

Would that not at least encourage them to be more selective as to which ones they might then accept?

Or am I being stupid, and should not I realise that, yet again, perhaps only us mugs on PAYE are really subject to those recent Grinch-inspired BIK tax law changes?

Could the changes which force employers to collect and report BIK at source not also be applied/expanded to require those drug firms supplying the perks to report on all those self-employed GPs who avail of them?

Maybe then ...

Michael Lynch,

29, Evora Park,

Howth,

Co Dublin.