The Irish Congress of Trade Unions will today express its concerns over recommendations on tax breaks made by the Commission on Taxation and Welfare.
Representatives from ICTU are due to appear before the Oireachtas Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight today.
They are expected to tell members that recommendations on promoting enterprise seek to not only endorse, but in some cases seek to extend, a raft of "very generous and costly tax expenditures".
In its submission to the committee, ICTU is expected to highlight concerns over the entrepreneur tax relief, the Special Assignee Relief Programme and the R&D tax credit.
"While it may be the case that in some individual, limited and special cases, such tax breaks may have some economic justification, it is also the case that they breach the principles of horizontal and vertical equity, are highly regressive, reduce transparency, and conflict with the principles of tax justice and solidarity," ICTU's Social Policy Officer Dr Laura Bambrick is expected to say in her opening remarks.
"In general, these recommendations run counter to the approach taken elsewhere in the report and only serve to undermine its overall coherence," according to Dr Bambrick's opening statement.
ICTU is expected to tell committee members that while it supports the principle of broadening the PRSI base, it has major reservations about recommendations to make low wage workers and people aged over 66 liable for PRSI.
ICTU is also expressing concerns about recommendations relating to certain social protection payments.
The union is also expected to say: "We will need to be assured that the design principles of the recommended changes to jobseekers' allowance, the working family payment and child benefit will not, in effect, act as a wage subsidy for low-paying employers before we endorse these recommendations."
