Labour: Revenue changes will hide details on tax breaks
The Labour Party has slammed plans by the Revenue Commissioners to change the way it compiles statistics on the tax rates paid by some of Ireland's top earners.
They say the new methodology will apparently be more vague when it comes to categorising such taxpayers, with those paying less than 1% of their income due to be included in a "less than 5%" range.
Labour TD Joan Burton said: "From now on, they're not going to tell us are there individuals who, despite enormous incomes, pay no tax.
"They're going to fudge the whole thing into statistics which will show anyone who pays tax of under 5%.
"Basically they're abolishing the information - this information which was available to people is now going to be abolished."
The latest Revenue study in this area has revealed that more than 100 high earners used property-based tax breaks in 2001 to avoid paying an average of €200,000 each in tax.
Twenty-nine of these people paid no tax at all in 2001.
