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A Wealth Tax For Ireland - 2012


Across Europe countries struggling to reduce deficits and raise revenue for investment in public services and job creation are turning to wealth taxes.

France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland are just some of the countries that successfully operate wealth taxes. In France the socialist government has recently strengthened its existing wealth tax legislation. In Spain the Conservative government has reintroduced its wealth tax.

In Germany the leading opposition party, the SDP, have drafted wealth tax legislation and promised to introduce it if successful in this September’s general election. In Britain the Liberal Democrats are currently advocating the introduction of such a tax.

During the 1990s and 2000s light touch financial regulation was complemented by light touch tax regimes. Equitable and sustainable tax systems which had been put in place in many countries from the 1950 onwards were dismantled in parallel with the dismantling of the robust regulation of banks and financial services.

Today people widely accept that the dismantling of banking and financial services regulation was one of the causes of the global economic crisis of 2008 and was a mistake. There is also a growing recognition that the light touch tax regimes of the 1990s and 2000s left governments with unsustainable tax bases and are continuing to hamper governments in dealing with large deficits and requirements for investment in jobs and services.

Sinn Féin has consistently argued against light touch banking and financial regulation and against light touch tax regimes.

Our recent alternative budgets have strongly advocated progressive reform of the state’s tax system. We want a tax system that is fair and that generates sufficient revenue to provide world class public services and on-going investment in sustainable economic growth.

A key element of our progressive tax reform proposals is a Wealth Tax. This guide and the accompanying Wealth Tax Bill 2012 contained in the appendix detail the model of wealth tax advocated by Sinn Féin. The introduction of such a tax would play a positive and progressive role not only in reforming our broken tax system but in the social and economic recovery of the state.

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Sinn Féin's response to Budget 2014