Madam, – I rang the Revenue Commissioners no more than a week ago. Inquiring as to the status of my income-levy refund, I received the curt response that the income levy refunding process was subject to industrial action.
Further probing revealed that this particular process is one of the few carried out by the Revenue Commissioners that is subject to a current work-to-rule policy. Consequently, those of us who earned less than €15,000 last year must wait for a political resolution before any rebate is processed.
Taxation, or at least progressive taxation, is charged with the task of eroding social and economic inequality. The shamefully arrogant treatment of the least well off in this case has once again laid bare this maxim as an ideological impossibility rather than the social imperative it should be. The agents of the State, in the process of making political hay, are once again choking the most vulnerable of those they profess to serve. – Yours, etc,