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INDEPENDENT TD MATTIE McGrath has called on the Minister for Finance to reduce the Government’s excise duty on petrol and diesel.
Deputy McGrath said his proposal was reasonable as the cost of crude oil is at a record five-year low.
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance said the suggestion was not realistic as it would result in a tax hike elsewhere.
The Tipperary South TD said the Government had an opportunity to make sure people could “directly feel the benefit” of the economic recovery.
“The cost of crude oil has fallen to a five-year low and that should be reflected in the savings that can be passed on to motorists and employers like hauliers and others in the transport sector,” McGrath said.
He added that the Government “chose not to” support an opposition Private Members Bill, the Motorist Emergency Relief Bill, that would have effectively cut fuel prices by 5 cent, in 2012.
It is staggering to see that almost 57% of the retail price of petrol is in the form of taxes paid to the Government. In light of that scale of revenue return there must be some room for alleviating manoeuvres on behalf of the taxpayer.
The Department spokesperson said the taxation on petrol and diesel “comprises an excise component which is fixed and a VAT component” based on the end-price of the product.
“Accordingly, the steady reduction in the price of petrol and diesel in recent months, while good news in terms of reducing costs for business and the public at large, has meant a reduction in VAT receipts to the Exchequer in respect of these products.
“Any reduction in excise duties would have to be balanced by an increase in tax elsewhere or by a reduction in public expenditure,” he stated.
Sure why would this government want to help out its citizens
How would they be helping us by taking tax off petrol and adding it to something else or taking it away from hospitals or something?
Neal, you’ll never get elected with that sort of reasonable “logic”.
What you want to do is be populist and sensational. Mention that the ordinary man or woman on the street is having a hard time and that we should give everyone more money or stop charging everyone so much, in taxes and whatnot. Pointing out that cuts need to have an offset elsewhere is the same rubbish people have been hearing for years and they’ve had enough of that.
Also, promise them a unicorn. They’d like that.
You sir, are a dope.
Looks like a pair
I see in the Indo that they are thinking of axing the public sector pension levy for the public sector. God forbid they could cut excise duty as that might help us poor folk in the private sector. JOKE !
It’s bull$h1t …if they reduced the levies even by 1% all it would mean is that instead of buying say, €20 of fuel, a person would buy €25 because it’s cheaper. The reduction would soon be off set by higher amount of fuel and home heating oil being bought.
I can understand wanting to lower fuel prices to put more money in peoples’ back pockets (ignoring that the tax black hole would need to be made up elsewhere).. but did you just argue that lowering the price of fuel is a good thing so that we can consume more oil… is this 2015? Is the environment ok now?
Why would they buy €25 worth of fuel when they’d be getting more for the original €20.
Exactly what ‘fuels’ an economy, pity our great leaders are too afraid that their extortionate salaries and expenses won’t be paid, that is their only fear
Ask not what your country can do for you ,ask only how much more you can pay to your country
It’s easier for them to leave it in place then it is to reduce it and then to explain why there raising taxes else ware.
No reduction in E.S.B ?. Unless you Chang your supplier. Can someone explain that to me.
Ask Mr Chang
It’s called an introductory offer. Takes 2 minutes to change. Low prices to lure you in, then they hope you stay.
Instead of rewarding loyal customers, they reward new ones. Pulled upc up on this, threatened to go with sky and hey presto, got the same deal they give to brand new customers. Wonder would it work with ESB?
Why would anyone owe loyalty to a company? If it’s cheaper elsewhere, move, don’t stay out of some sense of misguided loyalty
Why would a c
Why would a company reward loyal customers, when there willing to pay the higher price? If the customers are to lazy to move, then that’s their fault
Terrible stammer you have brian, I hope you can sort it out :)
if you hadn’t noticed to get any discount on the unit rate you have to sign up to a years contract, 50 quid exit fee makes it hard to switch supplier
You get a 12 month discount when you sign up to a 12 month contract, once the 12 months are up you move company and get another discount.
You don’t need to pay anything when the 12 months are up.
There is no exit fee, I change every 12 months and never pay one
TR909 it’s awesome that worked for you. Obviously Joe average in customer support has his hands tied by policy until the customer ticks a certain box. UPC can hide behind contract conditions for a year but once that passes they can only hope to rely on the fact most people won’t think of negotiating a better offer. I must inform my housemate of your strategy.. I hear UPC have brought out a higher speed service with an introductory offer after all. It’s a real pity the routers are terrible though. Horizon is a high tech waste of space.
all very good brian, but in the situation we are now in with falling gas and oil, if a cheaper offer comes up while you are still in contract then you are basically stuck, one big switch have just completed an offer with energia, its a 1 year contract and the difference in unit price is less than 1/2 a cent over other suppliers, not a great saving to be locked into for a year. instead of reducing unit rates the energy companies are offering bigger discounts which trap you into a contract. the contracts also allow them to raise the unit price if energy goes up but not to reduce it when energy comes down.. The CER should be doing its job and forcing energy unit rates down, they were very quick to support the constant rise over the last number of years, energy companies are raking in a fortune over the current drops in oil and gas, its definatley jot being passed on.
The CER doesn’t control energy prices. It’s an open market.
You may be locked into a contract but when it expires and you change you could get pay less than the energia deal.
When you book a flight do you whinge if the price changes before take off?
booking a flight is a bad analogy, your fair can’t go up after you’ve booked it. and what’s the point of having an energy regulator if he dose’nt regulate anything. remember he was the on who has set IW rates at on of the highest In the EU.
Almost 57%? Is that a typo? I thought it was almost 75% of the price of petrol goes to the government coffers?
I think I heard 66% or 68% from that AA guy on the radio one day but maybe it’s gone up since then as that was a few days back :P
“Do ye want a kick in the balls or a punch in the face?” Our government sucks.
It’s a trick question……
We get both simultaneously.
Is that before or after we bend over?
Don’t forget the secret kicks up the arse we get with sneaky charges and increased levies … As well
Our governments don’t want us to live they want us to exist to pay bills and if your lucky enough to have a job you will pay more.
Thieves, pure and simple.
The government putting it’s grubby little fingers into your private pension pot toi shore up public sector ones is the real kicker.
It’s coming to and though, thank The Lord.
they’re all thieves. pay very close attention to your bills, thats how they rob from you and make it all the more complex to confuse you. closed an account with vodafone, grand, they took their last bill from debit, low and behold, took a few euro the following month. “sorry, that was done in error, we can credit your account for any other vodafone service”!!! what account? i just closed the f****ing thing! “ok, we can send you a cheque”. i’ll wait for that to arrive, which as always, it won’t. then i will go public with it like now. for every small error these crooks make for a % of their customers that don’t notice, its more money for them. keep things small, have less and less to do with any of them. having 3-4 different bills has become too complex and you’re leaving yourself open for at least one to fool you.
theres an idea there for anyone to create easy to read bills, FULLY explained not assumed, for the customers benefit not theirs.
You’re right there. The cost of bills has become extortionate. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t keep up. We are being robbed left, right and centre by VAT on bills, petrol and then all the new taxes for nothing i.e. property tax, USC and now they want water tax. It’s impossible to live anymore without constant stress from a new massive bill coming in the door to take your every last penny.
You have to cut back on everything and every service you can, except the essentials, in order to try and hold on to a bob. I have come to the same conclusion as yourself about starving them of revenue every way you can as they never seem to be satisfied. No amount of tax can satisfy them and yet we only get the bare minimum of services, if that.
I suppose when you have pledged most of your citizens taxes to bailout banks, into the next few decades, there is hardly anything left to run the state. The economy will never recover under these circumstances as people have no money left after all the tax and bills.
Guaranteed anything that helps the punter won’t even be considered by this government!
Nope, definitely not. Reduction in USC, tax rates and bands. Raise is children’s allowance, restoration of Xmas bonus.
Water rates! I rest my case.
Yeah they take way too much in tax but this Mattie McGrath fella needs to be given a lesson in basic finance. Why does he think a reduction in price leads to a fall in the tax for that product!? I’m sure he’s just looking to get his name in the paper and stir up people who have an equally poor understanding of how things work.
Please guru enlighten us as to how “things” work. At the moment we have a reverse Robin Hood government that robs from the poor to give to the rich.
BS. Explain with numbers and facts please.
What I’m saying is his argument is sound, that is there is very high tax on fuel. However his reasoning for a cut (the fact that oil prices have fallen) makes no sense. As I’m sure he knows, the fixed part of the tax is fixed (funny that). It does not change due to price fluctuations. This has always been the case. The fact that he’s bringing it up now shows he just being populist. Was he campaigning for an increase when oil was $140 a barrel?
It would make more sense for him to call for a reduction in government taxes when prices were higher, that would have helped consumers more.
@ one human please enlighten me how the rich are robbing the poor
Thanks for the enlightenment guru. How the rich have robbed the poor? Bail out or was it a bail in?
The government seem to be of the mind that we should be one of the most expensive countries for everything.
Petrol/diesel is pretty much the same cost in UK & Europe.
Isn’t the UKs road tax already built into the cost of their fuel though??
No. Road Tax is paid too.
Ireland’s fuel is a good bit cheaper when the currency exchange rate is factored in. £20 (~€25) would barely buy you a quarter tank.
Or we could cut public spending?
How about we just cut public spending, how about getting rid of increments.
Not surprising. Tax on fuel obviously helps to pay for schools, hospitals, Gardai and so on. Cut the tax and you have to cut services.
Why does it have to mean a cut in services? 30 million to the arts anounced yesterday? How much is wasted in things like government jets and travelling around the world like arab state princes. Gold plated pensions for retired civil servents and politicians who retire at 50 or 55 years old? Interest on forced EU borrowings to prop up countries like Greece and spending vast sums of taxpayers money in Africa while citizens in this country struggle under the burden of tax to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads.
This is a mouldy government.
This is no place for making sense. Stop that nonsense.
Government jet us rarely used, and when it is only in exceptional circumstance, when commercial flights can’t work out. The arts are an essential part of our national soul and in many cases attract national and international tourism.
Moonshine you maniac, how dare you spout logic and reason on this site.
Standard government response
The same was the argument for the illegal VRT – hospitals are dependant on that money, and where else would we get it? Taxes should not be based on the fact that you have already spent them, but on the public’s seeing them as a fair method of providing a service. Like everything else, what is collected in petrol and road taxes doesn’t match the rubbish semi-PPP infrastructure we get. So stop being greedy, and shifting money between departments. Reduce the petrol costs to match what is needed by transport only, make it easier on the public, and get the rest of your house in order re: health.
Alien 8, VRT however much you hate it, is not “illegal” as you put it under either Irish law or EU law. If you want what are known as “earmarked” taxes where the tax you pay is applied to a particular purpose then accept the consequences. There is a reason that virtually every Govt in the world dislikes earmarked taxes and this is because they limit the ability of a state to raise general taxation and apply it as they see fit in line with demands, whether political or public. Ironically, applying earmarked taxes does not stop the public wanting the public services currently funded by general taxation. Most people want to have their cake and eat it and wish the shortfall to be picked up by someone else as long as it is not them.
Childrens allowance is still a “universal benefit”?
Is this the party line now? Cheaper petrol or higher taxes. Water charges or higher taxes. What’s next?
The billions it cost to run the country has to be found somewhere. Otherwise re-elect Fianna Fail to borrow to the hilts again and leave us minnions alone, but some dark day in the future the people who Fianna Fail borrow money from will come looking for repayment and so it will all begin again.
People who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
This is some “recovery” we are seeing here in Ireland.
Shower of thieving bas@%rds . Tax tax tax is all we hear about in this ” great ” country of ours. Give us a fu;#% ng break . It’s only here that this would happen .
No tax in other countries sure.
Ah shur, fuk off to another country where you pay no tax, you pillock.
What would a farmer know about tax? Nice Massey by the way.
Shop around for petrol and diesel folks. In my town there is a difference of 6c in the price of a litre of diesel.
Dose not seem to be effecting people’s habits. The more expensive petrol station is as busy as ever.
Shopping around definitely works. 144.9 or 119.9 (diesel). I’d travel the 30k for that saving.
Beware though, some of the cheaper fuels do not give great miles-per-gallon.
Mattie McGrath must be stupid. He’s promoting pro cyclical economic policies which promote boom and busts. He must have been around in the last Fianna Fáil government.
When oil prices are high he should be looking for a cut in excise duty.
Agreed, an elasticity in the price (based on variable duty) would be nice so that the government’s income remains stable but increases in oil prices are somewhat cushioned. VAT is charged on the base price and the duty + carbon tax, so the government’s take increases with prices currently
You just can’t cut tax you selfish lot, just think about the poor bondholders and banks what would they do without your money?
Maybe we (Ireland) should not have borrowed from the bond-holders in the first place?
How would you like it if you loaned someone a whack of your life savings and when the repayment time came around you were told to fcuk off?
You mean like when I went into a bookies, took out a bet on a horse with long odds which then lost….. what do you mean I don’t get my money back????
But no, we shouldn’t have taken the thirty pieces of silver
we should have borrowed ten times more then defaulted! haha.
Moved to oz a couple of years ago and something that hit me straight away was the price of petrol. It changes on a daily basis here, as the cost of crude goes up or down. Sitting at $1.18 on average at the minute. That’s about €0.82 a litre.
Thats a decent price – cheapest petrol is €1.20 p/l here (pumps.ie) at the moment. I figure the taxes are much lower on NZ fuels, hence the more volatility in price changes as you state.
I give up.
To be honest its the lesser of two evils, and I say that as someone that usually spends 250/month on petrol.
I can choose to use my car less, but I can do nothing about a raise in income tax. On principle I prefer a consumption tax to an income tax.
Fools here would’nt understand.
Ok how about a tax hike on corporate earnings, you know the ones that pay practically nothing as it is anyway. We are now known by the world as a nation of tax dodgers “double Irish” thanks to our govt. I suppose they’ll tell us the entire planet have got it wrong except us.They’re dragging our good name through the mud and bending over backwards to facilitate these corporate spongers.
Incorrect, our CT rates are the best performing in a recent survey. Our 12.5% rate realises 12.4% in collections whereas the French 33% realises somewhere around 6% or 7%. There was an article on here only a month or two ago about this.
Our biggest ills with finance is wastage. Were damn good at collecting taxes but pi$$ poor at spending it wisely.
23% VAT included in your parking charges each time you go to the shops…post office…chemist etc…as I noted listed on sign on a car park price display over the xmas period. Never knew this before….surely a retrograde tax when town centres and domestic smes are being hammered!!! JOKE
Agreed, and the biggest insult is the pay-for-parking at hospitals. I often wonder do visitors to prisons have to pay-for-parking in the same manner? There should be an outright ban on pay-for-parking at hospitals.
I’ve not heard of the double French or anything like it.
They need the tax to pay for their grossly ridiculous wages and multipensions…
If we reduced the size of the Irish public sector, and cut social welfare handouts, we wouldn’t have to pay such high taxes to the State.
If the Dept of Finance say it then it must be true
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