REVENUE:MINISTER FOR Social Protection Joan Burton told the MacGill Summer School of her concern that some aspects of the Irish tax system fail to command proper allegiance.
The Minister highlighted “the many shelters that enable many very wealthy people to escape paying the share of their income that is needed to finance the efforts of the State”.
“Personally, I cannot reconcile the lax rules on residence that facilitate tax exiles with any notion of loyalty to the State,” she added.
She was not an advocate of “super-high” income tax rates but there were “far too many opportunities for some groups and individuals to escape the level of contribution that can reasonably be expected from those in their position”.
She said: “The extent to which we pay our taxes is a measure of our loyalty to our State, and the extent to which the State returns our commitment with quality services is the measure of the State’s loyalty to its citizens.”
She added that many of the business people who prospered in the boom years “have shown an extraordinary lack of loyalty to the State in putting their private wealth beyond the reach of their creditors, even when those creditors include the ordinary taxpayers”.
“I am thinking in particular of some senior figures who have gone to extreme lengths to put their assets beyond the reach of the banks, many of them now totally State-owned or heavily reliant on State support.
“There are some who comment negatively on an entitlement culture among people claiming welfare, but quite frankly I am struck by the sense of entitlement of people who want to maintain a millionaire lifestyle while leaving the ordinary citizen to pick up the tab for their reckless borrowing.
“We should not debase the language of our political life. Issues that concern right and wrong, fraud and theft, crime and punishment, merit description in terms that do not mitigate their impact. When we soften our language in situations that suggest there is one law for corporate crime and a different one for routine theft or welfare fraud, we become complicit with wrongdoing that corrodes trust.
“I take heart from some recent court decisions which suggest that we are finally beginning to take white-collar crime seriously. The conviction and exemplary sentence in the Waterford corruption case is indicative of this.
“I can assure you, too, the future will be different, and this Government will put in the hands of the judiciary plenty of legal weapons with which to deal with bribery and corruption allegations,” she added.
