Outline Policy on Taxation

Many thanks to Bobcat for forwarding this and other documents to the Archive.

This is a further addition to the series of DSP pamphlets. This series of short pamphlets was issued by the party in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Each pamphlet took a different policy area and expanded across four or five pages on the approach the DSP would take.

This one on Taxation argues that:

The inequality of the present taxation system represent on of the most urgent economic grievances facing the working class in the Republic.

And it continues that:

Any progressive tax system should be based on the following four minimum objectives;

-To raise adequate revenue to finance public services, the system of social welfare at a realistic level, and Government measures aimed at increasing the national productive capacity.

-To ensure that the principle of ‘equality of sacrifice’ is adhered to in the application of taxes.

-To effect a redistribution of wealth

-To coordinate the tax system with progressive economic aims wherever possible, e.g. tax incentives for industrial investment, reducing inflation by taking VAT off certain items like school books, or tax measures which help to modernise the economy.

And it makes a further interesting point:

Before examining the specific proposals for reform it is essential that one aspect of the political background is made clear. Over the last twenty years the Republic has been in transition from a largely agricultural society in which the values of the small farmer and the small businessman were held to be the ideal, to a largely urban society where the working class make up a majority of the population. Rapid social change has been taking place while in politics the changes have been minor.

Unsurprisingly it calls for higher Corporation Tax, higher Capital Taxation and a resource tax on agriculture. Also in the text are some pointed comments about other political parties in the Republic of Ireland during that period.

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