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necropolist
necropolist
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Environmental Taxation & EU issues pt4
Oct 15, 2003, 11:57
The Fight Against The Bin Tax Is About Taxation Justice

Rising Bin Taxes and the reintroduction of water charges would mean a new Local Tax of up to €1,000 per household each year within a few years
It is important for campaigners to bring out the hidden agenda of Government. What they want is to have a parallel structure of local charges that would in reality be a new tier of local taxation parallel to the PAYE system. These would be imposed by the Local Authorities and would not be accountable to the Dail. The Minister of Finance and Government of the day would then be able to claim that these charges had nothing to do with them and wash their hands of them. We have seen the cynical operation of this trick already with long overdue reductions in PAYE being given in Budgets and then most or all of the value taken back by rises in local charges and stealth taxes.

The Bin Tax has already reached €400 in some local authorities. The OECD is pressing for the reintroduction of water charges, initially at a level of €200 per household. If this were done it would not be too hard to see these charges rising in a few short years to a level of €1,000 per household.

It is argued by the supporters of the Bin Tax that it is meaningless to speak about ‘double taxation’ because the level of PAYE taxation has gone down significantly over the past several years. What they conveniently ignore is that these tax reductions were not only long overdue from the 1980s but were also in compensation for many of the modest increases in wages that workers accepted, or had forced on them, through the national ‘partnership’ deals. They now want the reductions to be an excuse for new local taxes.
In fact since 1987 there has been a huge reduction in the proportion of the national wealth going to working people and a huge increase in the proportion going in profits, rents and dividends. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that in 1987 wages and salaries of workers amounted to 59% of Gross Domestic Product while the profits and rents taken by the capitalists amounted to 41%. By2001 the proportion going to workers had fallen to 46% while profits and rents had risen to 54%. This can be readily understood by young workers attempting to purchase a house and by working people generally in their experience of price rises and rent increases across the board.

Tax Cuts for Big Business

The fight against the bin tax also highlights the unjust tax system, which hugely favours big business and the super rich such as billionaire and millionaire tax exiles.
In the Budget for 2001 the Government provided the corporate sector with tax cuts of €329 million and in 2002 a further cut of €305 million, not taking into account the cut in employers’ PRSI.
This means a provision in this year alone for the corporate sector paying €634 million less in taxation.
This would not only provide for massive investment in waste management but also allow for investment in necessary social and other services.
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