Sir, The tax changes announced in the recent Budget amounted to a mere tinkering with the taxation system. The failure effectively to relieve tax burdens in the Budget can be traced to the Government's inability to meet its own targets on public spending.
If the Government had kept to targets, spending in 1996 should have been about £200m lower than will now be the case. That would have been enough to finance some tax reliefs that people might actually have noticed.
Henceforth, public spending must be curtailed to allow for lower tax rates which offer the best means of raising overall employment levels. The main pressures on current expenditure are the public sector wage and the social welfare bills respectively.
The Exchequer pay and pension bill will rise by 5.5 per cent this year and the Department of Social Welfare will spend £824m in 1996 on unemployment benefit alone. Many of the welfare recipients operate the black economy. It is essential therefore that both public sector pay and social welfare costs be curbed now.
A freeze on public pay from the expiration of the current PCW later this year, and a reduction in welfare payments to able bodied people, would re base money which could be used to encourage enterprise. Permanent jobs, not useless FAS schemes, would be the result. It would also mean that more money could be spent on the real poor the mentally handicapped, the blind, the old, the disabled, the genuinely sick, and those capable of participation in society. Yours, etc., PP Taxpayers' Protection Group, Shelton Gardens, Kimmage Road West, Dublin 12.