The Small Firms Association
is urging its members to lobby TDs in the hope of reversing what it sees as an unfair aspect of the budget.
The association criticised the imposition of the 11 per cent Universal Social Charge on self-employed people earning more than €100,000 a year and claimed the government has broken a promise to end the 3 per cent USC charge imposed earlier on the self-employed.
SFA chairman AJ Noonan said: “It is critical that there is at least equity in treatment between employees and proprietary directors/self-employed people in the tax system and that risk takers are not discriminated against. In a still high unemployment economy, we should be doing everything possible to incentivise self-employment and small business start-ups.”
Yesterday, SFA director Patricia Callan said members of the association would try to get the move reversed. She said that when the USC came into being in 2010, an additional loading was placed on the self-employed which the Government said would run out at the end of this year. Instead, it has been extended, she said.
