BUSINESS OPINION: WHEN IT comes to hard sells, they should not come much harder. Tax cuts for the well-off are unpalatable to the public at the best times but, in the current climate, you would have expected considerable public anger over the measures announced in the Finance Bill to do just that.

Instead reaction has been muted. Sheer fatigue may be a factor. Equally, an outbreak of restraint among the opposition.

More interestingly, it may be another example of the sort of social cohesion which is increasingly differentiating Ireland from our luckless fellow Europeans in Greece.

The Government, for its part cannot be accused of trying to conceal what it is doing. If the measure is to work in attracting jobs, they actually have to shout about it from the roof tops.

That is not to say, however, that the Government has been entirely forthcoming about just how generous it is being.

Much of the focus on Wednesday was about changes to what is called the specific assignee relief scheme which is targeted at foreign employees of multinationals transferring here for the medium term (one to five years). Some 30 per cent of what they earn each year over €75,000, subject to a maximum salary of €500,000, qualifies for tax relief.

The Government expects about 60 or 70 people to avail of the programme which will run for a trial period of three years at an estimated cost of €5 million a year. The thinking is that the individuals, referred to in foreign direct investment jargon as “project champions”, will bring projects to Ireland with an economic value far in excess of this figure.

Much less attention was paid to another measure in the Finance Bill which will allow companies that are claiming tax relief on research and development spending to transfer the benefits to specified “key employees”.

There does not seem to be any limit set on the amount of relief that can be transferred, though the individuals in question cannot pay less than 23 per cent tax. They are also still subject to the universal social charge.

Given the value of the RD credits granted each year (€216 million in 2009, the last year for which a figure is available) and the unavoidably subjective nature of what constitutes a key employee (the scope for this measure to be used to cut favoured staff members’ tax bills is quite considerable).

It also requires companies to be paying corporation tax according to accountants, Ernst Young, which means it may have no benefits to what is supposedly its target market, early-stage RD companies. It would seem to be very attractive to large technology-based and extremely profitable multinationals of which we have several here and would like many more.

It is important to remember that there is no additional costs to the State as it would be paying the credit anyway and the company has to incur the cost of doing the RD here.

That said, it is not exactly in keeping with the concept of national solidarity to think that potentially hundreds of presumably Irish employees of companies like Google and Facebook could be paying less tax than the rest of us while enjoying arguably far better economic prospects.

It will take a while for the tax partners in the various accountancy and legal firms to explore the potential of the changes. And big firms may choose to keep any RD credits they have for themselves.

But, for the time being, the Government appears to have quite successfully introduced a couple of measures aimed at allowing a significant number of Irish and international employees of multinationals escape at least some of the pain of austerity.

And the arguments they have advanced for doing so are far from robust. One junior minister was on the radio during the week defending them on the basis that the German Chamber of Commerce in Ireland wanted them.

Likewise the other main plank of their case is anonymous and anecdotal reports of inward investment projects being lost because of high marginal tax rates.

They do not amount to hard empirical arguments, but still we seem prepared to accept them.

Discounting the apathy and ignorance arguments, that would seem to imply a sense of trust in the institutions of state.

And this is not all that surprising for two reasons. The first is that the IDA does seem to be delivering in terms of inward investment and thus when it supports a tax break – as it presumably does – people are inclined to at least give it the benefit of the doubt.

More subjectively and more interesting is the conclusion that people have confidence in the whole tax and foreign direct investment-based industrial strategy. It worked before in the 1990s and can work again now. Thus we have hope and thus we are not taking to the streets like the people of Greece.