Banking & Public Finances

The Workers’ Party calls for:

• State control of all banking institutions. In circumstances where banks in this country are dependent on leveraging property in order to maintain liquidity, resulting in a push to re-inflate house prices, the Workers’ Party demands measures to de-leverage Irish banks from the property market to facilitate the taking into state ownership of banking institutions.
• Investment in both productive enterprise and capital and infrastructural spending.
• At a time when the income gap between rich and poor is further increasing the Workers’ Party calls for the repudiation of all odious, illegitimate public debt which is not the responsibility of the working class and is an attempt by capital to make workers pay for the capitalist economic crisis.
• An audit and a sustainable solution to Ireland’s debt crisis to free up revenue streams for reinvestment in projects that serve the interests of working people.
• In relation to the Anglo/INBS debts, this debt has been converted to bonds in the Irish Central Bank which, once sold on the open market, will begin to cost the Irish taxpayer unpredictable amounts. These bonds must be frozen and repudiated.

Taxation

Billions of Euro are lost to the productive economy each year through tax breaks, loopholes and tax cuts for the owners of capital, the wealthy, property developers and multinational corporations. At present, the workers of this country face an increasingly heavy burden of taxation while the wealthy use every means at their disposal to escape liability for tax. Taxation is necessary to fund decent public investment in public services. Ireland can no longer afford to be a tax haven for the rich. The Workers’ Party stands for:

• A programme of progressive taxation, and an immediate end to the abuse of tax breaks and incentives.
• Legislation ending all tax loopholes.
• A legal clampdown on the use of Ireland as a tax haven by multinational firms.
• Legislation to end large scale scams like international transfer pricing and phantom companies.
• The introduction of a minimum effective tax rate for individuals.
• The implementation and enforcement of an effective rate of corporation tax.
• The introduction of a wealth tax on assets above one million Euro.
• That all income, whether earned as wages, dividend, sale of stocks and shares, capital gains etc, be treated on the same basis for tax purposes.
• Abolition of the category of ‘Green Diesel’ and its replacement with a tax refund scheme for legitimate operators thereby ending a massive tax loss to the economy while also ending a major criminal and pollution racket.
• An increase in Ireland’s rate of employer PRSI which is the lowest in Europe. Increasing employer PRSI is one useful measure to increase the contribution of capital towards the state’s welfare fund.