FROM THE ARCHIVES:The PAYE system of collecting income tax was introduced in Britain in the mid-1940s and came to Ireland some 15 years later following a campaign for its introduction by trade unions to replace annual lump-sum tax payments. In this editorial The Irish Timessuggested wider reform of the tax system was needed. – JOE JOYCE
A DELEGATE meeting of the Dublin Council of Irish Unions will be faced this evening with a resolution calling upon the Government to introduce a system of “pay-as-you-earn” in relation to income tax. The fact that an organisation of trade unionists should be interested in such matters is an evidence of changing times. Even a few years ago wages were such that very few members of the so-called wage-earning class were liable at all to income tax; but since the war the improvement in earnings – if not necessarily in conditions – has been so substantial that many manual workers find themselves confronted with the annual demand from the Revenue Commissioners and all the inconveniences attendant thereon.
This may be a good thing for many people outside the trade-union ranks. The ordinary victim of the income-tax system – hitherto a member of the voiceless “white collar” class – has been incapable of exerting any pressure upon the Government. Unorganised, he has been helpless; but, now that to his mute appeal is added the very articulate voice of the organised manual worker, there is more than a possibility that the whole business of income tax will demand a serious hearing in Merrion street.
P.U.T.U.O. – the Provisional United Trade Union Organisation – already has called for the introduction of the “P.A.Y.E.” system, which is the rule across the Channel; but this newspaper has been bold enough to ask, and asks again, if a simple amelioration of a bad tax is enough. The fact is that income tax does not serve the needs of an essentially agricultural country. Its incidence cannot be spread fairly.
Quite apart from the inability of the Revenue Commissioners – common to every nation that still employs this antique method taxation – to cope with evaders in the form of professional men who live on “fees” rather than fixed salaries, it is clear that many Irishmen who ought to come within the category of those liable for income tax are actually outside its scope. The system . . . is based upon obsolete principles, which have been discarded even in Great Britain, the originator of the notion, from whom we have inherited it; and, since it applies to only a limited section of the community, it is unremunerative. . . .The trade-union movement would be better advised to take its stand on the necessity for a radical change in the whole approach towards taxation. Both the Americans and the British are studying the possibility of a universal sales tax, to replace all other Government imposts. It may not be the answer, but there, again, it may, and we should not be, as always, behind.
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