Lenihan ignored key advice, says Bruton

POLITICAL REACTION:MINISTER FOR Finance Brian Lenihan ignored the recommendations of the Commission on Taxation when drafting the Government's Finance Bill, according to Fine Gael's finance spokesman Richard Bruton.

Mr Bruton said the Bill would make life easier for the Revenue Commissioners and tax advisers but would result in extra tax charges for householders.

“Thousands of struggling households will be bitterly disappointed that the hoped-for stimulus for jobs has not materialised,” he said.

Mr Bruton said the Coalition had displayed a lack of ambition and vision by producing a Bill that he claimed was not fit for purpose.

“It is also extremely disappointing to see the Minister ignore recommendations from his own Commission on Taxation to introduce smart new tax concessions.”

Mr Bruton insisted Mr Lenihan had committed a blunder in his budget speech last December when he announced that “the worst is over”.

Huge problems had been identified with a carbon tax on coal and peat, but “the Minister is ploughing ahead regardless”. It was likely that fuel with a higher carbon content would be imported from the North, he warned.

The Labour Party’s spokeswoman on finance Joan Burton also accused the Government of imposing hardship on families and said Mr Lenihan had “side-stepped” the Commission on Taxation’s recommendations.

Ms Burton said VAT would be charged on a range of services such as waste collection, recycling, off-street parking, toll roads and the operation of leisure facilities.

“Depending on the VAT rate charged for equivalent private services, these local authority services will now attract a VAT rate of 13.5 per cent or 21 per cent,” she said.

Ms Burton said the Minister had done nothing to curtail tax relief on investments in private hospitals or what she described as “mega pension pots”.

She accused Mr Lenihan of acting extremely conservatively when it came to the abolition of property-based tax reliefs, some of which she said would continue to “drain taxpayers’ money” for up to seven more years.

The Green Party’s input was minimal, she claimed.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman Arthur Morgan dismissed the Bill as a “lightweight” measure that would not raise the revenue the country needed.