Is an average family more fairly taxed now than they were in 1974?
Taxation and the Family: Restoring Balance and Fairness, the Iona Institute’s new paper, analyses tax bands, credits and benefit payments and shows definitively that the answer is no.
A family with one wage-earner and three children earning one and a half times the average industrial wage (or around €65,000 a year) is worse off by more than €8,000 under today’s tax system than they would have been under 1974’s.
Child Benefit offsets much of this. For the same with three children it does this by €4,680 but that still leaves a gap of well over €3,000.
Our paper reveals a pattern among the tax and spending policies of successive governenments: they have been gradually weakening support for the family.
From the discrimination faced by families where one spouse works in the home; to the ever-decreasing recognition given to dependent children in tax policy: it’s long past time for a new deal for families in Ireland.
