Sir, - I read with interest two pieces on your front page of (Friday, September 3rd): "Special accounts used to evade tax", and "New figures show scope for tax cuts better than expected". Are these merely unrelated reports or do they represent an opportunity to chart a new reality in Ireland where all taxpayers are treated equally?
We hear from the Oireachtas Committee DIRT enquiry that politicians and bankers accepted that a massive defrauding of the Revenue was necessary in the 1980s in the national interest. It was argued that unless some sections of Irish society could evade their tax liabilities, their savings would be moved out of the country and there would be a run on the pound.
By contrast, those not in a position to control their tax returns, notably in the PAYE sector, paid unprecedented levels of tax to ensure that there were schools for the evaders' children, roads for their cars, hospitals, social welfare services, etc. Their contributions maintained the integrity of the economy and laid a significant part of the groundwork for our current economic success.
Jim Mitchell's committee is documenting the scale of this tax fraud and the complicity of government and financial institutions. No one is disputing the reality of what was going on. Yet our politicians have not apologised for this unequal treatment of Irish citizens. They will be seen by the electorate as extremely remiss if they do not grasp the opportunity now presented to redress this unequal treatment.
Our current economic success provides "scope for tax cuts better that expected". What is needed is a creative initiative involving targeted compensation of those sections of society/individual taxpayers who were forced to pay excessive levels of taxation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Nothing could better demonstrate to the tax evader that Ireland has changed, and that the days of the "cute hoor" are over.
And let's not worry about overheating the economy. Any payments can be balanced by levys on institutions implicated in the scams of the past. Compensation can be sensibly metered into the economy using financial products which mature in a staggered way over the next five or ten years.
Each day we hear new revelations which strike at the foundations of a fair society. If politicians respond now and demonstrate in a tangible way their commitment to equal treatment for all taxpayers, a new era of taxation equality will have dawned. - Yours, etc.,
David O'Beirne, Heatherdale, Castletroy, Co Limerick.