Taxing Ireland’s super-rich could net the exchequer an additional €8 billion a year, Oxfam Ireland has claimed.
The charity’s chief executive, Jim Clarkin, told the Oireachtas Committee on Budgetary Oversight that levels of inequality between the world’s richest and poorest people had now reached the level of the “gilded age in 19th century America, when staggering wealth existed alongside devastating poverty”.
Ireland is no different, he said, citing recent figures showing the number of super-rich in Ireland (individuals with net wealth over $50 million (€46.6m)), had more than doubled in the past decade, rising from 655 to 1,435 people between 2012 and 2022.
It means that for every $100 of wealth created in the period, $34 has gone to the richest 1 per cent with less than 50 cent going to the bottom 50 per cent.
The number of people in Ireland with a net wealth of over $5 million (but under $50m) has also doubled, from 9,430 in 2012 to 20,575 in 2022.
Oxfam Ireland called for the introduction of a wealth tax, levied on what it said would be a small number of individuals, those with the equivalent of over $5 million net wealth (20,575) and those with over $50 million net wealth (1,435).
Depending on the model chosen, the tax could net the exchequer between €5 billion and €8 billion, it said.
“In putting forward these models we have sought to illustrate both the levels of elite wealth and inequality that may exist in Ireland, and the potential benefits of taxing that wealth,” Mr Clarkin said.
The commission, in its report last year, advocated a significant reorientation of the tax system towards taxing wealth rather than focusing more on income, suggesting tax yields from property, land, capital gains and capital acquisitions could all be increased.
Mr Clarkin’s colleague Simon Murtagh said wealth taxes in the past had been badly designed, leaving them open to political attacks, but this has changed with more targeted instruments being deployed. He cited the success of Argentina’s recent once-off wealth tax which raised $2.4 billion to help pay for the costs of the pandemic.
Mr Clarkin said globally billionaire wealth increased from $500 billion to $14 trillion since 1987, a 28-times increase.
“This large glut of wealth, especially when it is held in non-productive and carbon-intensive forms – and in order to avoid taxation – is of little benefit to wider society,” he said, noting an extra 70 million people were forced into extreme poverty in 2021, and at least another 71 million people in 2022.
