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Budget 2011 is unique as the framework and some of the planned changes were detailed in the Four Year Plan which was published two weeks ago. The financial adjustment was set at €6b with €4b coming from expenditure cuts and €2b coming from increased taxation. The precise details of the tax changes had to remain until the Budget was published but given the size of the financial adjustment all sectors of society had much to fear when the Minister stood up in the Dail to introduce his budget.

Income Tax

While the campaign to stop any cuts for pensions proved successful in the four year recovery plan, Age Action has expressed its disappointment that the Government has ‘agreed to freeze the rate of the State pension until 2015, as part of the bailout deal it has reached with the IMF and the EU’.

Recent analysis by European insurer Aviva has shown that people in Mayo need to save an additional €9,100 a year to live adequately in retirement. Mayo’s annual pensions savings gap, the difference between what is currently being saved and expectations for retirement, stands at €550 million, the equivalent of an average €758 per capita per month of working age or €9,100 a year. These are among the findings of a comprehensive analysis of Ireland’s retirement landscape to date by the company.

Galway solicitors Purdy FitzGerald are reporting a surge in businesses seeking to reduce their rates liability. The action is promoted by upcoming local authority budgets which may include a commercial rates hike.

The weather didn’t suit the Australian rugby players on Tuesday evening but thankfully Munster gave us something to cheer about while the prospective loss of our economic sovereignty was hovering at the back of our minds. The long and the short is that we have made a complete mess of being a sovereign nation and while we can blame the politicians, the bankers, the Church, basically all the people we used to put faith in, the sad reality is that we all share the responsibility. We are the ones who elect politicians and we are the ones who lobby them to put parish pump politics ahead of the good of the country, naively believing that the satisfaction of our own greed will bring us security. Personal greed, and perhaps a neurotic fear of poverty, has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy. It has also prevented us developing a robust social conscience when it comes to paying taxes to ensure quality public services.

A Mullingar woman is to be tried in the Circuit Court after she was charged with stealing more than €50,000.

Mayo County Council this year has paid out €200,000 in overdraft payments to a bank while it awaits a payment of €9 million from central government to pay for sanitary projects in the county. Head of finance for Mayo County Council Peter Duggan gave members the information this week when delivered a financial report on the council’s expenditures and incomes up to the end of September this year. At the meeting the members later approved the extension of the council’s overdraft facility up to €35 million to the end of 2011. The breakdown of the overdraft was €30 million for the capital programme and €5 million for the revenue account (day to day running costs).

In the first of a series of occasional articles on topical tax issues, Tom Donnelly, an independent, professional, tax adviser based in Castlebar, outlines the potential benefits of transferring a business to a company.

Dear Editor,