AS usual, the accountancy profession is sharpening its collective pencil and going through the detail of another mammoth Finance Bill.
This year's 144 page special covers everything from offshore islands to the reproductive habits of greyhounds. It includes the usual mix of important measures and minor tinkering with tax incentives and loopholes as the Minister and his officials put another brick in the wall of tax legislation.
Looking at the details of amendments to existing law, the old advice given to the person looking for directions - "If I was you, I wouldn't start from here" - comes to mind. If a tax system was being designed from scratch, it would, of course, look very different and far less complicated than our existing hotch potch.
There have been many calls over the years for "major tax reform", most notably from the Commission on Taxation and the National Economic and Social Council. All have come to nothing, as a succession of governments have opted to give away a few bob to taxpayers when they can afford it.
A few forays into controversial territory have came to nothing. Whenever the subject of tax reform is mentioned, any sensible politician will say "remember the residential property tax" and run a mile.
There are two parts to the Finance Bill. One is the enactment of the budgetary measures. Ruairi Quinn has not had to make any major row backs from what he announced on Budget day. Most of the income tax changes move in the right direction, but tighter control on public spending would have allowed much more meaningful reliefs.
The second part of the Finance Bill is the new measures not mentioned on Budget day. These are the usual mixture of the interesting and the obscure. One of the more significant is the further clamping down on the patent royalty tax relief, used as a tax avoidance scheme by many manufacturing companies. This relief has been subject to abuse and the Bill tries to strike a balance between stamping this out and retaining the break for genuine research and development spending.
Elsewhere, the new measures include things as diverse as an exemption from taxation on payments made to women suffering from Hepatitis C, some technical changes to capital gains tax and new measures to encourage investment in certain cottages and apartments. Last year some seaside towns got tax relief and this year it is the turn of 21 offshore islands. Next year, it might he the turn of suburbia.
It will be some time before it is clear whether the measures announced will achieve their modest objectives. Hidden in the small print of the various paragraphs will be phrases which will be parsed by accountants and investors before deciding which way to jump.
Unfortunately, encouraging economic activity through tax incentives often has aspects of the sledgehammer and the nut about it. The Business Expansion Scheme, for example, is a useful measure to attract private capital into risk investment, but has been the subject of much abuse over the years. Fortunately, the scheme now seems to be more focused than it was in its earlier years. Many other allowances and reliefs are of much more questionable value and are subject to abuse.
The case put forward by the Commission on Taxation - and many other studies - for much less reliance on allowances and reliefs and a much simpler and fairer tax system, still stands. But the political realities mean we are more likely to see a continuation of the piecemeal measures of recent years.
Tighter control on public spending could still allow considerably more progress to be made in cutting taxes over the next couple of years, including a real attack on the unemployment traps in the system. A strategy which puts tax reduction as a priority could help to achieve this. If this does not happen, tax reduction will continue to be the poor relation in the annual Budget and Finance Bill.
