Now.
In the Dáil.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan is delivering his sixth budget speech since 2011. To wit:
9% VAT rate for tourism and hospitality industry will be retained
Start Your Own Business scheme to be extended for a further two years
Low cost, highly flexible loan fund for farmers announced
€1,270 income tax credit for fishermen
Help to Buy scheme announced for first-time buyers relating to newly-built homes
Home renovation scheme extended for two years to end of 2018
Rent-a-Room income ceiling up by €2,000 to €14,000
Lower three USC rates to be reduced by 0.5% – USC 1% rate cut to 0.5%; 3% rate cut to 2.5%; 5.5% rate cut to 5%
2.5% USC rate ceiling increased from €18,668 to €18,772
€100 increase in Home Carers’ Credit to €1,100
DIRT will be reduced by 2% each year to 2020 (41% to 33%)
Mortgage Interest Relief will be extended beyond December 2017 to 2020
Earned Income Tax Credit for self-employed increased by €400 to €950
New relief from carbon tax for solid fuels announced
Intention to introduce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks in April 2018 after public consultation
Excise duty on pack of 20 cigarettes to go up by 50 cents
€1.2bn in funding for housing, with 47,000 new social housing units by 2021
Additional €105m to enable 15,000 more households to avail of the Housing Assistance Payment Scheme
Budget 2017: The key points (RTÉ)
Watch live here
Earlier: What About A Radical Alternative?
Up to 20K rebate on new gaffs
Watch new gafs go up suddenly in price by up to 20K
This is Ireland. They’ll go up by €60k
…but Baldy said nobody would be throwing their hands in the air…welcome to Parlon country…
With a limit of up to 600K.
What first time buyer ever paid 600K for a gaff?
This does not apply to first time buyers of second hand homes. So useless for real people, this is a tax break for developers only.
They have been sitting on their hands waiting for tax breaks.
Delores McNamara
I put initial deposit down on new build, as first time buyer, a few weeks back.
Contract of sale not yet with solicitor, I expect it will be within days.
I expect the purchase price as agreed a few weeks ago will have gone up by 5% in the contract.
Builder was happy to sell at agreed price, increase is nothing but extra profit for them.
Maybe I’m wrong, bet ya I’m not
I was wrong
A sugar tax by April 2018. It’s nothing more than a lip service revenue exercise.
Why would you have a sugar tax. Seriously why not just tax overweight(that’s not from a medical condition) people some sort of health levy since this is about health and not at all about just making more money.
Because overweight people cost the health service far less in the long term.
I recently lost 15kg and the main thing I cut out of my diet was sugar, so I am a firm believer that sugar is evil. However, I don’t think a tax on drinks is the way forward. People need to be properly educated about the negative aspects of sugar and bad diet in general. Also, why is the tax just on drinks? Sugar is everywhere. Most low fat products have about 15% to 20% more sugar in them than the “standard” product.
Congratulations!
Should we:
-educate people about the dangers of tobacco?
-tax it very heavily?
Or some combination of both?
At least the tax on tobacco is on all tobacco products. Why are they just targeting drinks with the sugar tax, sugar is in loads of stuff in very high levels.
the heavy tax on tobacco is nothing to do with public health and everything to do with public money.
If the government were serious about public health and smoking, they would ban the sale of cigarettes entirely and make tobacco only available from chemists or whatever with to registered smokers.
I’d like to see a government ban tobacco outright and survive politically though it has been suggested elsewhere. I also imagine it would be difficult to control in a country that is part the EU as discussed below black market smokes are already around.
I see no problem taxing people on a product that has such terrible impacts on health and the health of others. Tax it to the hilt but that money should be channelled into the health service, smoking cessation services and other health initiatives.
They should raise the age limit on smoking by a year every year. No one who ever took up smoking legally would be made to quit and no one not old enough would ever be able to legally take it up. The only problem would be that you’d be paying for treatment for all the old smokers without the tax take on new ones though.
Now that’s an interesting idea!
@ Dόn Pídgéόní and edalicious
Did it ever occur to you geniuses that back in the day, everyone smoked yet were more healthy?
Taxing tobacco to the point of probation only grows the black market to the point where stats about how many people smoke mean frig all.
Hold on, what? Everyone smoked and everyone was more healthy?
Of course, yes, back in the day, smokers were fine. But round about now, they’ll be getting a cough that won’t go away or a funny sensation when swallowing.
This would explain why those who switch to tobacco only purchase are for the most part… sugar free.
Yes, the black market was one of my points. I clearly am a genius.
But given people died much earlier ‘back in the day’, of you know, industrial accidents or falling down mines or war or CHD caused by eating lard and smoking 50 a day, I’d say you missed the genius boat today.
My point is that slapping on tax may be an easy revenue generating exercise but it has very little to do with health care because when people buy counterfeit they are using an unregulated product which is potentially way more dangerous.
Probation does not work.
It never did.
* prohibition
It’s a good thing they don’t just slap a tax on tobacco and leave it at that then.
Yes
The sugar tax is simply an extortion game being played by politicians in the hope the industry will buy then off with a massive bribe.
Yep
He speaks the truth
Oooooh, Big Sugar. You may have read a little too much Carl Hiaasen ;-)
I would have preferred to see rent relief brought back. Help everyone not just those buying new builds.
Another 50c on the easy bloody smoking marks.
Time to research the black market
moore st, outside the ilac
johnny blueshirts
Time to research the counterfeit market which is not on sale in shops surely?
I’m a fisherman renting a room in my house and looking after my sick ma who’s going to leave me her 300k house.
cha-ching!!
Where are these new houses in Dublin that first time buyers can afford? Just the name of one development??
It’ll likely be called Sylvan Grove. And it’s probably in Dublin 20.
Riverfield
Lakeview
Torybrook
Riverbrook
Lakeriver
Watersedge
Typical comment broadsheet.ie reader.
Keep renting in D6W till you’re 35 so. At which stage you’ll be too old for a mortgage. Maybe if you spent less time commenting and less on nights out on South William Street/brunches in Ranelagh, you wouldn’t be faced with such grim options.
No negative equaity
No horrific commute daily from D175
Nights out and brunches.
Where did it all go wrong Mr Best?
Haha, joyless numpty!
lol you just got in trouble with your ma
9% VAT for hospitality retained yet no commitment extracted on #Livingwage or stable hours of work.
Fiver to shore up the pensioner vote.
Negligible amount for minimum wage
Overall, meh.
All this is headlines. The next step is the Finance Act to bring it to implementation. Lot of horse trading goes on between then and now to make changes. That is what we should really keep any eye on.
That Budget is the equivalent of a piddly prize on the Late Late Show. One for every handshaker in the audience. Marbella 2017 for the Nama toasting developers.
they shouldnt have restored public sector pay or increased the social. They could have abolished the USC with the savings to be made there.
You mean stamp on the less well off and give tax breaks to those who don’t need them?
Such is life.
“the less well off” – ffs. You seem to conflate being “less well off” with objective impoverishment.
The top 10% always do better. They get paid better, live in bigger houses, get much better sex, have better offspring, are better educated, etc. They also drink less, smoke less, have better health, and are less inclined to behave compulsively.
It’s not just about money. If we had perfect “equality” and divided everything up “equally” it wouldn’t be long before the above situation emerges yet again – such is life.
There are snakes and ladders everywhere. Most people in the world today would give their right arm for the chance to avail of the opportunities in Ireland and its incredibly generous fall-back welfare system. At the end of the day, if you’re waiting around for “the government” to improve your lot, then you’ll die miserable and full of regrets. Might as well pi$$ it all up against the wall and sit at home complaining all day from your bedsit complete with fibre internet connection.
I like how you intensified the bit about sex. That was particularly convincing.
That was what stood out for me too actually. Do they use the money during the sex as an aid or something?
Actually working class women have more orgasms than richer women
It’s amazing that no journalists expose the scam that is first time buyers grant for new homes when it should also apply to second hand homes.
It’s a customer acquisition exercise on behalf of builders, paid for by the state (you).
There is no reason why first time buyers grant cannot apply to ALL homes for sale.
In theory, it’s supposed to encourage the building of new homes because there is a housing shortage. You’d be better off having no grant rather than put it across the board because it would just increase house prices that way. Not that it’s not going to increase prices as it is though.
Builders shouldn’t need incentives if there is a market demand.
Shame the sugar tax isn’t coming in sooner. Anything that helps to tackle the growing obesity crisis even slightly, while raising government revenue, can only be good.
It won’t make a blind bit of difference. Sugary drinks are not the cause of the obesity crisis. If they were ringfencing the money to fund sports facilities or educate parents about healthy eating or something similar then maybe it would be useful. As it stands it’s just an attempt to take more money from people while acting like it’s for their own good.
Everybody past junior cert is a lost cause. The amount of fat kids walking around town drinking cans of coke.
We should take the weight / blood pressure and body fat % of every child up to 15 at the start of every school year. Put it all on a DSP database. Screw Dara protection concerns. If the child is within healthy range based on age the parents get a substantial tax credit in following tax year. If in the next year the kid is still in healthy range they get slightly bigger credit . If they get worse then they get less etc etc. At a particular point outside of healthy range they fall out of tax credit altogether.
Any kids who start off outside the healthy ranges, tax credit for first year, to incentivise Getting them into shape, but if still outside after 2nd year, no tax credit.
When it comes to weight loss there’s no such thing as a lost cause.
yeah and we can make the fat kids wear some form of identifier, like say, a yellow bicursal star and round them up into special ‘work’ camps.
And the Godwin’s law winner today is….
Pink triangle maybe?
Of course it’ll make a difference. If a bottle of coke costs 3eur, and a bottle of water costs 1eur, which do you think a parent will push their child to get? If a child’s pocket money in future only buys 50% of the sweets it did before how do you think they’ll keep eating sweets at the same level as before?
Its a blunt instrument, but short of far more intrusive government intervention in child rearing its the easiest first step in the fight against obesity.
The tax is only on sugary drinks. It will make no difference to the kids who eat a portion of wedges on the way to school or fill up on biscuits, crisps and chocolate or have their lunch in McDonalds, Burger King, Supermacs or the local chipper.
As I said, it’s lip service but clearly it’s fooled at least one person into thinking the government is taking action.
Pointless. We need large scale intervention . Harris can rob my idea of he wants, free of charge.
Iona ain’t gonna be happy.
Incentivising parents to send their kids to childcare and go out to work
9% VAT kept until all the ex Rugger stars have made all their cash money on pop-up restaurants run by overworked and underpaid burger chefs and pizza spinners.
*Land Rover Defender parked up on the footpath outside*
ever eaten in Bear?
Its really nice.
I don’t believe that.
Yeah, I really like that place. Good value too.
Self employed get nothing again. Income tax ceiling is still way too low, the increase for pensioners is cynical populist politics with a view towards the next election and getting the grey vote. There’s no real long term planning, or proper preparation for Brexit, so its business as usual for the cosy cartels of Ireland.
Would Ireland even function economically if it wasn’t for the massive taxes on alchohol and tobacco? I doubt it. No help for people renting or trying to buy a home.
More emmigration so.,.
The big deal about this budget is that it was signed off by the opposition.
History in the making right here today 11/10/2016.
so when FG pledged to abolish the USC .. they actualy meant over the course of 45 years?
At what stage in my life is Noonan going to die?
Just as soon as someone puts a stake through his heart.
Another bailout for builders.