The Commission on Taxation has made 250 recommendations including a tax on child benefit and the introduction of water charges, according to reports today.
Despite the significant Exchequer deficit the report does not recommend a rise in income tax rates and says that the combination of taxes and levies mean that anyone earning €75,036 is paying 53 per cent in taxes and levies to the State.
Of this 41 per cent is tax, 4 per cent is PRSI, a further 4 per cent is a health levy and an income levy of 4 per cent.
A property tax will be introduced which will eventually replace stamp duty and while a new carbon tax on energy has been proposed.
Artists' exemptions from taxes will be scrapped while reliefs on union subscriptions and bin charges will be phased out, the Irish Independentreported today.
Another proposal is a SSIA-type pension for those on lower wages with the State contributing €1 for every €2 saved by employees.
In response to the reports, Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton condemned the rise in taxes.
“No country has ever taxed its way back to economic recovery or to health in its public finances. But that is exactly what this Government is trying to achieve," he said. Between the measures already announced by Government and those promised for the years ahead, the ratio of tax increases to day-to-day spending cuts is 2:1 (€10.6 billion in tax increases to €5.3 billion in current spending cuts).
“This is unfair, unwise and will only make the recession deeper and longer.
“Already, in the last year the Government has announced 20 new taxes or tax hikes, costing a middle-income family over €5,000 per year. . . . more than half of every extra euro earned is taken by the Government. This has been a formula for job destruction and economic stagnation," Mr Bruton said.
“Even Minister Lenihan belatedly appears to be recognising the damage he has caused to the economy with his last two budgets, and is now scrambling to change course over the coming months if only he can persuade the Taoiseach.
“So, the last thing people in this country need from this Government at a time of deepening economic crisis is to be dreaming up ever more ways to tax them to pay for an unreformed, often dysfunctional and high-cost public," the Fine Gael frontbencher said.
Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton there were a number of surprising aspects to the reported recommendations.
"Most surprising of all is the absence of any apparent reference to the phasing out of the tax reliefs available only to the wealthy and particularly to the property based reliefs that contributed so significantly to the Irish property bubble and the consequent economic crisis."
"Recently published figures from the Department of Finance showed the extent to which the super-wealthy were still able to avail of these reliefs - 400 benefiting to the extent of €300m during 2007 - and there will be real anger and disappointment among ordinary taxpayers if the Commission does not recommend the ending of this scandal," she said.
"It is also a matter of concern that the focus of attention appears to be on additional new measures that will hit lower and middle-income families.