Gerald Nash
Question:116. Deputy Ged Nash asked the Minister for Finance the estimated revenue that would be raised by abolishing the special assignee relief programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11436/20]
View answerTuesday, 16 June 2020
Questions (116)
Written answers
The Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) is an income tax incentive designed to help reduce the cost to employers of assigning skilled individuals in their companies from abroad, to take up positions in the Irish-based operations of their employer or an associated company, thereby facilitating the creation of jobs and the development and expansion of businesses in Ireland.
In Finance Bill 2018, I re-imposed an upper salary ceiling of €1 million on the relief with effect of 1 January 2019 for new entrants and for existing beneficiaries of the programme from 1 January 2020.
Last year, I commissioned an independent review of SARP. The report of this review (published on Budget day 2019) confirmed that there is a strong policy rationale for the existence and continuation of the relief.
Revenue advise me that it is not possible to estimate accurately the cost of the SARP scheme, in its present form, up to 31 December 2022. The reason for this is that there are currently no data available that would enable such calculations to be made.
While abolishing these SARP related costs can be viewed as a saving to the Exchequer, likely losses resulting from lower employment levels (and related tax receipts) and other indirect effects within the activities that are supported by the Programme would also need to be factored into the equation.
The following table sets out the annual cost of the Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) for 2012 to 2017 (the most recent year for which data are available):
|
Year |
€m |
|
2012 |
0.1 |
|
2013 |
1.9 |
|
2014 |
5.9 |
|
2015 |
9.5 |
|
2016 |
18.1 |
|
2017 |
28.1 |
Further information can be found at the following link:
https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/research/sarp-report-2017.pdf .