There is one difficulty that arises in connection with this motion. At the head of it, and before the Schedule, the Deputy asks for "The aggregate amounts assessed as income for the last year for which returns are available." No returns that would give precisely that information have ever been available or are ever likely to be available. The returns that have been published from time to time have been of assessments in a particular year, but sometimes these assessments related to previous years. A certain proportion of the assessments always related to previous years, either because of non-discovery or something else. Assessments were not made for the year of the income, and consequently all that could be given at any time would be the aggregate amount of the assessments made in a particular year. You could not give, without waiting for a very long period, the actual amount of assessments in respect of the incomes of a particular year, and that has not been done. I think Deputy Johnson would be satisfied if he could get returns of the type that the British Government has published. I would like to say that we are desirous of having information ourselves for our own use, and we are desirous of publishing the information as soon as we get it. The amount of work and the delay that must occur in these cases can be estimated by Deputies, when I tell them that the British returns for the year 1921-22 were only published in August last, that is about 2½ years after the end of the year to which they related. The returns for the year 1922-23 will be published by the British next August.
During the year 1922-23 the income tax in this country was collected by the British for us on an agency basis. It was also collected on the basis of the United Kingdom income tax. Even if the British were able to get separate figures for the Saorstát for the amount collected here, that would not be equal to the amount of the Saorstát tax. For instance, income from British securities was not assessed here at all. There were firms, the entire profits of which were assessed here prior to the beginning of the first year in which we dealt with income tax ourselves, and which are not now assessed here or are only in part assessed here. Even if the British were able to give separate figures for the Saorstát for the year during which they acted as our agents, these figures would not be of any value as showing what our returns will be for the first year of Saorstát tax and the first year of Saorstát administration. Such figures as will be available relating to the year 1922-23 will be all-Ireland figures, and they will be published by the British authorities in August next. We are preparing certain of the figures asked for by Deputy Johnson. Under Schedule A we propose to give two divisions instead of three. We propose to give the figures for land and the figures for houses and other property.
As regards item (iii.) in Schedule A, that would be infinitesimal in this country, and no preparation has been made for giving separate figures for it. B we will give. As regards Schedule C, we propose to sub-divide it into two divisions, that is Irish Government securities and other Government securities. So far as the material that we have got at the present time, we are not making a distinction, say, between British Government and Dominion Governments, and it would not be possible in the first return that we will publish to sub-divide that into more than two sections. With regard to Schedule D, we will not be able in the first return we publish to sub-divide that very much. We will be able to give the Irish railways separately, because they are separately assessed by the Special Commissioner, but the other sub-divisions that are asked for could not be given. Some of them may be given, and if we can we will give some of them. We might give item (ii.) as it stands. If the words "other than Government securities" were not in— there are British Government securities from which tax is not deducted, that come under Schedule D and not under Schedule C—we might be able to give some modification of (ii.) and then give the rest of D separately.
The position is, as Deputies are aware, that the Revenue Department is very much under-staffed. It is almost impossible to do the ordinary work of collecting tax, making repayments, and the necessary work that is to be done in a Department as well as to contend with the enormous pile of arrears. We have taken all the steps we could to recruit the staff. Deputies may be aware that it takes three or four years to make an inspector of taxes. We are not in a position in which we can afford to say to an inspector: "Let £100,000 of revenue stand by and get us all these statistics." We must only get all the statistics which can be got without loss of revenue. When you are dealing with arrears it is necessary not to postpone them because as arrears become more stale more of them become irrecoverable. We will give what division we can on D, but I do not think we can give the amount of sub-division that Deputy Johnson suggests. I am not able to say at the moment what precisely we will give. In regard to Schedule E we would be able to divide it in this way: Government officials. Their salaries can be given easily, and then "all other salaries," because as Deputy Johnson may be aware, "all other salaries" were added to Schedule E, except quarterly assessments in the case of manual workers. Therefore, it will not be possible to sub-divide it in the way Deputy Johnson suggests. It will not be possible to give the number of persons assessed in each year of the above Schedules. I believe the British authorities at one time did attempt to give that, but they certainly have abandoned it, and they gave no such figures in the recent returns. An individual might be assessed under Schedule A for farms in Kildare and houses in Dublin, and there might be quite a considerable number of assessments. He might be assessed for directorships of companies in various places, and it would be a work of enormous difficulty to get accurately the number of persons assessed.
I do not know how the matter in No. 3 here differs from No. 1. No. 3 asks for the "aggregate gross amount of income assessed under each year of the above Schedules." I do not know how that differs from No. 1, except that it is simply making a tot of the sub-divisions into which it is suggested the various Schedules should be divided. As regards the amount that will be allowed by way of exemptions and deductions, that will be given, of course, when the figures are ready, but it is one of the matters that will prevent a speedy production of the figures because, as a matter of fact, we are dealing every day with exemptions, deductions and discharges of assessments which cannot be supported. As a matter of fact, there are many assessments yet to be made in respect of the years 1923-24. Some of these arose out of dividends that were brought in from Great Britain where we did not deduct the tax, but under an arrangement got particulars from the banks. The banks supplied particulars in respect of the deducted taxes. When the particulars came to us, some of them at the end of the year and at different periods, assessments had to be made. All these assessments have not yet been made. The trouble is that we are very far from being at a period where we could arrive at the amount of the various deductions, exemptions, etc. In regard to No. 5 we could not give the number of persons assessed whose incomes do not exceed a certain amount, at least we could not give useful figures for the reasons that I have already indicated. Then there is the fact that a great deal of income tax, which is paid by way of deduction, is not assessed, and the figures that would be supplied in that way would be misleading.
You have, as I have already said, Schedule A assessments, which are actually made on the houses and lands wherever situate. We can give the figures of the number of super-tax payers, and we can give the figures that have been given. I do not think the British authorities have ever given the particulars suggested in Number 5. At any rate, it would be a matter of enormous labour, but, to put it in a rough way, we are preparing to give substantially all the information without quite the same sub-division, at any rate for the first year or two, in some of the schedules, as is given by the British authorities. But it cannot be expected that we will be able to do that more quickly than the British authorities, with their well-established machinery, and without the same enormous burden of arrears as we have, can do it. The British authorities will not publish their figures in regard to 1923-24, which is our first Saorstát tax year, until August, 1926, and I think if we are able to publish figures before or even a short time after, August 1926, we will be doing very well. It might be possible to get certain gross figures in regard to the various schedules before that, but those gross figures are not figures I would care to publish. They would be of very little value, because of the amount of exemptions and deductions that would have to come off in each case, and they might vary very greatly from anything that we have already to judge by. We know that the amounts exempted in Ireland, taken as a whole under certain schedules, differ very much from the proportions deducted in England and Scotland. It might readily be that the amounts deductible by way of exemption and so forth from the gross assessment in the Saorstát might differ very widely from the amounts that were deducted in Ireland taken as a whole, because we know that the economic conditions differ considerably here from the Six Counties, and, consequently, such gross figures might be very misleading. I would be disposed to decline to publish these gross figures, for the reasons which induced the Minister for Industry and Commerce to stop publication of certain figures in regard to unemployment. He stopped publication because they were misunderstood and misrepresented.
I would be prepared, when we can get such figures, to give them to Deputy Johnson or to anybody who is interested. But, from the point of view of publishing them as a Parliamentary Paper, I think it would be wrong. Their value would be really negligible to anybody unless to an individual who was prepared to appreciate that they were rough approximations, which might be 20 or 30 per cent. wrong, and who just gathered what he could from them. It is a most unfortunate thing for us that we have not all these figures. But we started the Saorstát tax with a separate year and a separate system, and the modifications involved in double income tax and so forth in 1923-24.
We cannot go more quickly in the matter of getting figures than the British machine goes, and it simply means that however desirable the figures are, we must wait until the work has been done. The work of allowing various exemptions and so forth, is work that will occupy some time, and until that has been done and we can give something like the net and exact figures, there will be no use in publishing figures which might be entirely inaccurate. It is all very well to take one gross figure and say that income tax might yield so much, because inaccuracies in building it up might cancel one another, but when you go to delve down, inaccuracies might become greater, and to attempt to draw deductions from figures that would be constructed in that way would be misleading.
