Skip to main content

10 Need To Know Things About The Budget...

1 If €6bn seems like a huge number, it's because it is. The equivalent of more than €1,300 for every man, woman and child in the country, it works out at an average of €4,000 for each one of our 1.5 million households.

2 The Government says the Budget "adjustments" will be split 3:1 between spending cuts and tax increases, ie €4.5bn of cuts and "only" €1.5bn of tax rises. That still means that each of the 1.8 million people still working will each be paying an average of over €800 more tax in 2011.

3 For lower income earners, December 7 is likely to bring a shock. After the Budget, most if not all workers will be paying income tax. For someone on the minimum wage even a 10pc tax rate could cost them up to €1,800 a year.

4 Middle income earners are also going to find themselves squeezed. The Government is likely to hike all of the tax rates.

5 Homeowners are going to remember December 7 for decades to come as the Government finally imposes a property tax and water charges. Stand by for a flat-rate property tax of up to €1,000 per home. Water charges, at a couple of hundred quid per home, are also on the agenda.

6 Last year Brian Lenihan promised to replace PRSI with a new "social protection contribution". While it might seem like a good idea, the reality is likely to be a new tax that all workers will end up paying. A 5pc charge could cost someone on the minimum wage up to €900 per year.

7 Social welfare recipients, most of whom saw their weekly payments cut by €8 in last year's Budget, are likely to see their payments reduced once again, probably by a similar amount. Pensioners who were spared last year won't be so lucky this time round, with a €9 per week cut being mooted.

8 For many families, public spending cuts will feel like more tax increases. Any family with a child in third-level education will be forced to fork out a further €1,000 per year in the student registration fees. Families will see further cuts in their net (after-tax) incomes as children's allowance is either reduced further and/or taxed.

9 For health service users, cuts are likely to translate into higher fees to use A&E services, increased health insurance premiums and poorer services.

10 Conspicuous by its absence from the Government's announcement of its Budgetary plans was any mention of the Croke Park deal, which ring fences public sector employees from the impact of the cuts by guaranteeing no further pay cuts or compulsory redundancies until 2014.

International investors are coming to see it as the acid-test of Ireland's sincerity when it promises to mend spendthrift ways. It now looks as if the Government can either rescue our national solvency or keep the Croke Park deal, but it can't do both.


Report - Evening Herald

Popular posts from this blog

More Allsop Fire Sales...

Allsop plans five fire sales a year... THE UK auction house Allsop and its Irish affiliate Space plans to hold up to five distressed property auctions a year following the success of its first auction last Friday when 81 out of 82 lots were sold for a total of €15 million. The next auction is scheduled for July 7th, when 200 lots will be auctioned, including apartments, tenanted shops, farms and houses. According to Space director Stephen McCarthy, his company is being inundated with requests from receivers, banks and individuals who want to sell their property fast. Many of the properties in Friday’s auction were sold by Bank of Scotland Ireland and it’s believe there is plenty more of this stock to sell. These include apartments in the Castleforbes development in the Dublin docklands, as well as units in Dublin 8 and in Castleknock. However, the agency is also considering taking on more agricultural land. One lot, a 55 acre farm in Co Wickow sold particularly well, making €42...

As Featured On Dublin Postcards, Ad's, U2 Video...

I see in the Irish Independent today an item concerning a favourite, Dublin landmark, of mine... "THEY have featured in numerous postcards and a very famous Guinness ad, but perhaps their most important cameo appearance came when they featured in U2s 'Pride (In The Name Of Love)' video. However, Dublin City Council does not believe the Poolbeg chimneys are iconic enough to place on their Record of Protected Structures. Following a request from Cllr Dermot Lacey (Lab) to have the landmark ESB chimneys placed on the protected record, city councillors heard that city planners had conducted a survey, history and full assessment of the chimneys. They concluded from this that while the Poolbeg chimneys were considered to be of a certain level of architectural, social and historical significance, they were not of sufficient value within the meaning of the Planning and Development Act, 2000. Complex The twin red and white chimney stacks measure 680 feet in height and were construc...

Property Ireland - Irish Land Values Go Up Like A Rocket & Fall Like A Stone...

Land values go up like a rocket and fall like a stone... SITE EVALUATION: Why would a developer bid €225,000 an acre in 1999 and €2.8m an acre in 2007? Bill Nowlan explains WHY HAS THE value of development land fallen so precipitously, by over 50 per cent in the past 12 months, when residential and other property values have only fallen by 25 per cent or 30 per cent? There is an old property cliché which says that "land values go up like a rocket and fall like a stone" and this seems to have been bourne out in Ireland over recent years. Why does this happen? To answer this question requires an insight into the way developers prepare their bids for development land and I set out below a glimpse into that process. Let me start by looking at how a developer in normal times estimates his bid for a plot of land with planning permission, which in estate agents' parlance is ready-to-go. The key starting point in a developers equations is the expected sale price of the finished b...