Sir, – I was bemused to see that Alan Shatter decided the best use of his considerable intellect is to dismantle inheritance tax in Ireland ( “Alan Shatter hasn’t ‘given thought’ to election bid as he seeks revolt over inheritance tax”, News, September 17th).
Let’s face it, we’d all like to pay less tax. But with €500 million a year generated from the tax, it pays for a lot of critical services. Far from unfortunate victims, people who pay the tax have not earned the money. If a child inherits €350,000 they keep it all. If they inherit a million they keep nearly €800,000. And it’s hard to shed tears for someone who’ll inherit many millions. Better to think of it as a farewell gift to the society that supported and enabled them, and those that inherit from them.
We should probably significantly increase the tax over a threshold to avoid indolence among the nepo-baby wealthy and encourage them to be value creators not rentiers. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT CASEY,
Ann Ingle: Deliberately going out of my way to move for no particular reason has never appealed to me
Gerry Thornley: How about an alternative look at Ireland’s Six Nations win over England?
Is Ireland anti-Semitic, an outlier of tolerance or in the middle ground?
How risky is it to buy a second-hand EV?
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.
