On an earlier motion this evening Deputy Dillon indicated that he was prepared to bear, although grudgingly, an increase of three sixpences in the income tax if he could only get an assurance from the Minister that the tax was not intended to be permanent: that, in fact, the Minister for Finance had the view that this particular type of taxpayer was a person to be cultivated or was regarded as being of some value. I cannot understand how Deputy Dillon could ever have consoled himself with an assurance to be received from the Minister for Finance if he had sat through his Budget speech and had heard what he said, and had seen the particular gestures with which that speech was accompanied. In relation to this particular impost which we are discussing, the Minister introduced it this way, in Column 1505 of the Debates on 11th May, 1932:
I am anxious to pass on from income tax to sur-tax. We shall have to make changes there also. It is a well-established fact that many folk in comfortable circumstances are quite prepared to pay a good deal to rub shoulders occasionally with the rich.
Even now the Minister can hardly refrain from smiling at his own ludicrous comments.
We propose, by reducing from £2,000 to £1,500 the level above which sur-tax is payable and to give—
The Minister had better prepare for a laugh at this point—
a few who are in the top section of the income tax scale, the opportunity of rubbing shoulders with the rich all the year round.
That is the way that a tax which affects industry is dealt with. That is the comment, that is the clownishness with which this particular matter was introduced.
For wealthier individuals, the principle of co-equality must be given effect to, otherwise the possession of an inferiority complex might be imputed to us.
That was the mind of the Minister for Finance breaking out in spite of himself. The inferiority complex was evident right through the whole speech.
The imputation is one which no self-respecting citizen of the British Commonwealth could for a moment endure, so we propose to raise the rates of sur-tax throughout the rest of the scale to something like the British level.
Would anybody seek an assurance from a man who introduced a serious business which affects industry in the country with that type of puerility, that type of fatuity and that clowning? What is the value of an assurance? There is the text, and that is the atmosphere in which this thing is introduced. Quite clearly, the mind of the Minister for Finance has not passed beyond the stage that very immature minds might have been in 25 years ago, when there was a sort of belief that there was a big number of wealthy people who could be mulcted without any reaction on the community. Whether or not that type of immaturity was even a proper thing in the circumstances of 25 years ago, it is quite out of place in relation to the circumstances that hold within the Free State to-day, and although those remarks have less point on this particular Resolution than on the last, they are still not without point in respect of this particular tax. When the "No-Income Tax" agitation was as its height some years ago, a pamphlet was written by Professor O'Rahilly, of Cork, on the matter, and he said:
The really democratic view of taxation is to regard it not as a means of hitting certain classes but rather as the assertion of the community's claim to all surplus earnings, whether of Capital or Labour, which can effectively produce only with the help of organised society.
He goes on then to ask what this surplus income is, and says:
It is not an amount which can be theoretically and generally calculated by a theory applicable to all countries; it varies with conditions and national circumstances. This surplus is that portion the withdrawal of which will not here and now injure the necessary supply of Capital and Labour in any given country. When taxation trenches on this necessary minimum, there occurs a shrinkage and transfer of the productive agent concerned, whether Capital or Labour, in the trades or country concerned.
I say that the Minister should have got his Parliamentary Secretary to read portion of that to him and cut out the puerile stuff we were served with on the Budget. That is sound, and in the circumstances that hold here in this country at this moment, there is not the slightest doubt about it that even this attack, by way of super-tax on big incomes is going to have its reactions, and going to have its reactions almost immediately, on employment and upon that occurring there will certainly follow what Deputy Blythe has referred to—there is going to be, instead of the certainty of employment given at the moment, merely a possibility of reduced employment because in the transfer there is going to be a certain amount of wastage, and secondly, there is no possibility, and no certainty, at any rate, that the State is going to make any more effective use of this money by way of employment which it gathers in from the people who own it. I might be asked, at this point, what is the alternative, and I come back again to the alternative which the Minister for Finance and his Party promised us before. In a speech on the Supplementary Resolution, on 6th November last, in Column 1146, the present Minister for Finance said:
Every retrenchment that can be made in the public service could have been made at the beginning of the year or it could have been made last year, or in 1927, 1928 or 1929.
Had he any alternative in view? We must, however, come back to our advertisements. "Fianna Fáil has a plan." I do not know if the Minister ever read these things, but he is going to know about them before we are finished with this Budget.
Fianna Fáil has a plan, for the worker, for the farmer, for the shopkeeper, for the manufacturer, and for all; it means less taxation, lower rates, better times.... it means security.
Apparently his Parliamentary Secretary does not believe that that advertisement was meant to apply to this year. We do not know whether it is to apply even to next year, but, according to himself, it is to apply before he next goes to the country—a wise precaution. But the advertisement was rather precise, the advertisement that was put in and which promised us
Here is what a Fianna Fáil Government can and will do for you. More employment, more factories, more tillage, more houses, less extravagance, the end of destitution and a stop to emigration.
The economy matter was set out in a special paragraph of its own. The heading is "Economy" and all that I am going to read is contained in that:
Economy means the elimination of waste—the getting of 20/- value for every pound of the taxpayers' money spent on the public service.
The economy was going to be related to the public service.
Fianna Fáil is satisfied that substantial economies are feasible without reducing social services, inflicting hardship on any class of Government servants, or impairing in the slightest degree the efficiency of the administrative machine.
Then we get more precise still:
It has examined with minute care the estimates of supply services for the current year and is convinced that a saving of many hundred thousand pounds can be made, not including such items as the sum of £1,152,500 paid to the British Government in respect of R.I.C. pensions and other similar payments not required by the Treaty.
And then we get the crescendo:
The burden of taxation can be lightened by not less than £2,000,000 per year.
After a minute examination of the estimates for public services for the current year, Fianna Fáil is convinced that £2,000,000 can be saved. If we had that £2,000,000 saved, we could wipe out a lot of these Resolutions. Why have we not got them? There was a minute examination. There was care shown about it. It was not something thrown out in the dark, because we had had all the talks there had been in the Dáil for years previously.
