People earning over €250,000 per year should have to pay a minimum flat rate of tax of 15% in the interests of equity and transparency, according to a leading economist.
Addressing SIPTU Dublin's regional conference, Paul Tansey of Tansey Webster Stewart Consultants, said that one of the main sources of inequality in Irish society, despite record economic growth, was the continuing tendency of the tax code to favour the better off.
He said the current system of tax allowances, write-offs and investment schemes allowed high earners to legally write down their taxable incomes to virtually zero.
He said that he was not advocating that all such tax relief should be scrapped as most were justifiable in their own right on economic, investment or social grounds.
However, he proposed that those schemes could only be availed of if they did not reduce the tax liabilities of the wealthy below 15% of gross income.
