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WE’VE BEEN TOLD it will be a ‘giveaway’ Budget from Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin today – something that would have been unthinkable five years ago.
But what will the carrot they dangle before us ahead of next year’s election be?
Reductions in USC? Lob some money off the €1 wine tax? Greater use of medical cards? The return of the Christmas bonus?
Through Ignite Research’s People’s Budget, we asked our readers what adjustments they would make if they had the power bestowed on Noonan and Howlin. With an extra €1.5 billion to play with, the options are to increase public spending to improve services or to put money back into our pockets with cuts to tax.
Of the 5,472 respondents, the vast majority wanted the most significant cuts to income tax and the greatest extra spend in healthcare.
Click here for the interactive chart.
Do you agree? What is the one thing you think the government should do today? Tell us in the comments section.
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Stop penalising someone that gets up in the morning to go to work!
And stop rewarding lazy, job-dodging, social welfare scroungers….Christmas fecking bonus! Surely to earn a bonus you have to do something of note. Sitting on your ar$e doesn’t qualify
The Christmas Bonus is a moral hazard for being on the dole. For instance one might not actively pursue employment in December as one knows there’s a few extra bob in it.
Best of luck to the people that will get a little bit more to spend this Christmas ..
Might even keep them away from some nasty loan sharks,too ..
Hey Beano-you’re a right miserable auld fecker ,aren’t you ?
@Francis
There any thousands of hard working, tax-paying people out there who will have to work long shifts, weekends, maybe even two jobs this Christmas just to keep the house warm, put food on the table, buy their kids some presents….where is their Christmas bonus? What are the government doing for them?
While the people who are on dole, rent allowance, child benefit, free medical cards…get a bonus?
You do realise people on the dole can’t afford the things you just mentioned, hence why they get them? People in the middle are angry and so they should be, they work hard for little reward but lets not start blaming the unemployed. The only people who can fix this is the government and THEY are choosing not too. By all means, get angry, but direct your anger to where the problem comes from.
Gearoid. The social welfare is there to bridge the gap between employment. Not to be used a s a sole source of income. The long term unemployed and people who screw the system are what most tax payers get angry about. I’m all for helping people out when they are in need(I was on job seekers for about 2 months) but it’s about time the government got a bit tougher on some of these life long leeches.
Blah,blah,blah!
Won’t people be getting their bonus by the changes in the USC ?
Beano – Better they die, and decrease the surplus population!
Scrap USC!
The Election
Never happen. They’ll keep reducing it, but it’s here for good
scrap the TV license
Think they should have scrapped the TV licence when they introduced LPT.
They have me feeling like I’m getting a birthday card with a few quid in it today I DONT WANT IT. Spend it on getting people off trollies, crime & homelessness. Withdraw legal aid for anyone who has used it twice. Reduce politicians salaries by 35% & let them pay the majority of their expenses just like the rest of us, we would then see who is in it to change the world.
Love the legal aid one. Shame none of them will be done.
all great ideas but getting politicians to reduce there own wages is impossible
If they are to reinstate the Christmas ‘bonus’ at least change the name to ‘additional Christmas payment’. Bonus sounds like you worked for it.
Many of them did work, you uninformed twonk. They receive a contributory old age pension. For you, this means they paid stamps whilst working all their lives, so deserve a bonus payment.
Most oap and many who have found themselves on invelity pension have worked for it. We can’t paint all the will benefit from it with the one brush.
I am referring to the many who have not , nor have any intentions of ever, working for it but still get their ‘bonus’. There are many many people who work hard for a living, who are struggling to make ends meet, that do not get a tax relief bonus at Christmas so why should someone who has never worked be rewarded a bonus payment for sitting on their backsides and not contributing like the rest of us.
Then can I suggest you better target your bigotry in future.
Twonk
I’m a carer I work 24/7 please don’t tarnish us with the same brush.
If the word “bonus” was replaced with “additional supplement” would you stop whining? Just to clarify to be in receipt of a Social Welfare payment for most, YOU MUST HAVE MADE A WORKING CONTRIBUTION to qualify for payments.
unfortunately that is not true, over 34,500 receiving dole have never worked
The Devils own tax, USC, abolished. The hated , so-called pension levy, a further tax on sitting duck public servants, which brought many of us to a point where we pay over 50% of our income in tax, also abolished. A rise in corporation tax of 1%. A commitment to make the buggers that dodge corporation tax, pay the full due amount, or jail the pigs.
The government parties should be made stay overnight in hospital and emergency depts to see the real Ireland.
“A rise in corporation tax of 1%.”
Yay, lets start warding off the large companies that employ so many of us. The companies that purchase services and goods from other Irish SMEs.
This is why left-wingers should never get into power.
I’d be happy if the just paid the 12.5%. . No need to increase it . Just get them to pay it.
Paul you forgot the schools, live on minimum wage for a week, They do stay over night in hospital but it’s always private, you really don’t expect them to wait with the wage earner, senior citizen, unemployed etc. I think staying on a chair in a hospital from fri- mon morning is where they should be. If they think my son is going to come home from a good job & give up his house with the pool in america for a slim promise of work here. They are now living not on another planet but in outer space, as the space between their ears is what is keeping them out there. But the joke of it all is that there are 1000′s of us here who will forget everything they have read & just believe the same old crap dished out & vote the same old plonkers back in again. Then we start all over with the same clowns in a different circus.
Raising corporation tax would mainly hit SMEs, as the multinationals have agreed a fixed tax rate, lower than our 12%
Reduction in childcare costs you would think they don’t want people working 1500+ a month for 2 kids in a creche scandalous
€100-150pm childcare tax credit. Over a year that can be one mortgage payment or rent payment. Would make a huge difference to working families
would creche prices not go up from providers knowing you have this extra cash? what’s needed is a steady rollout of public creche provision with the cost coming from a cut in childcare cost above a certain age (16?).
Lets hope the self employed get some support!
I am going to say health, disability services but know its a waste of time. You need balls as well as money to fix the health system , something lacking in this government and they already have proved disability services were a lower priority than the water bribe as they cut from disability services the same amount they are giving out in the bribe.
The disabled are a minority so the government aren’t interested in their vote.
No pictures of Michael Noonan:))
Stop interfering in the property market. Just stop. The thought of the govt paying developers for housing sold ‘under’ market value makes me sick. Who will define ‘market’ value? Will other goods producers be compensated in the same way?
the TROIKA being given credit for managing our economy in a safe and secure manner.
Scrap Irish Water and reinvest the money spent on this bloated quango in the water infrastructure, like all governments were supposed to over the last 30 years.
I think this will be the best budget we’ve had for years. Taxes on middle incomes will be lowered, important features of our social welfare system will be restored, better resources for childcare, more teachers and Gardai and improved public sector pay. If they can do all this and keep the public finances from spiralling out of control again I’ll be voting Labour and FG.
Tell Bell Enda the end is nigh when you bring him in his cup of tea later Ian… Good lad
Karl. FG are sitting on top of the polls and the first “giveaway budget” in just under a decade hasn’t even been announced yet. You’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.
Government resignation
Tax relief on childcare with fee increases index linked so that the tax relief isn’t eaten up with price rises
Houses, houses, houses!!!!
Build the metro/underground , it will be needed in the years to come so stop putting it off, it will take 6/7 years to build
Stop rewarding the spongers who live a life time on the dole not a bother to them. I’d say the average single mother out there has more money than most ie rent allowance, dole, micky money, children’s allowance.
Stupid survey. I want to seriously reduce public spending and reduce taxes. I know where there is serious waste and bad policy.
I don’t have a problem with public spending Liam, just how it is spent. That example of 70k per staff member who were doing nothing in a Limerick university is widespread and that’s the sort of waste which needs to be cut out.
Looking forward to the introduction of a PAYE tax credit for the self employed and owner directors. Fed up with getting penalised for creating my own job.
get rid of USC and give us ordinary workers a break, we’ve bailed out enough gangsters!!!!!
The multiple child allowance (small premium payable in children’s allowance at school time to parents of twins/triplets/quads/etc), to help cover school costs as there’s a double whammy at that time.
I’d like to see that re-instated. It’s only €200 but it really helps with that expense. The amount of people that got it is minuscule but it really helped them out.
1 -Fairness and Progessiveness
2- STOP charging 50% tax on all Bonus payments across the board!
Somebody getting a €200 xmas bonus should not just come out with €98 of thay while someone who gets a €200,000 bonus comes out with €98,000
The tax level should have thresholds just like PAYE!!!
It’s marginal tax, big difference.
If you’re a low earner and get a €200 bonus, you’ll pay anywhere between 0% and 30%, i.e. take home between €140 and €200
But if you’re a high earner, and you get a €200 (or €200,000) bonus, you’ll pay around 50%.
It’s amazing how many people in this country still have no clue how their own tax is worked out.
Sorry Nigel, doesn’t work. Higher earning self employed types would just pay themselves in bonuses.
Bonuses are performance-related pay, not special money that shouldn’t be subject to tax.
There are tax efficient ways of giving someone 200 quid at christmas such as one for all vouchers, up to a limit. (250 euro or something?)
An allocation to finance one-way airline tickets for each coalition member so that they can F(ly) off and leave us alone!
True fountain of knowledge you are….
I would like to see further inroads into reducing our reliance on debt. As such, no tax giveaways (and I stand to get quite a bit of tax back next year) and just some well targeted spending where its critically needed (in services). With some discipline we could be nearly over the line with the balanced books.
We would be in a far stronger position then to renegotiate debt (along with not adding to it), as we would only require short term funding during the year.
An increase in funding for charities/support services
i cant believe this guy is standing at the next election after sticking it to the labour voters, i wish this career politician gets kicked out at tge next election, he a turncoat…
2 gits hanging from a rope?
Ban super taxes, when we buy petrol and diesel the government share per litre is nearly double the actual price of the fuel.
have your say