I'm struggling to find too many positives about yesterday's Budget.
I do accept the need for tax increases and spending cuts in the current climate.
But the overall strategy of this budget baffles me. He reduces incentive to save money, by increasing DIRT tax, CGT and Exit Tax on investments. This at a time when interest rates are very low anyway and most other investments are going through a very volatile period.
So if he doesn't want us to save, maybe he wants us to go out and spend instead, thus putting much-needed money back into the economy, right?
Wrong - he increases levies and reduces reliefs so that people will have less money to spend.
So what does he really hope to achieve?
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It lacks any vision at all. There is no coherent plan for the medium to long term.
If a business was in trouble it would probably adopt this type of approach, just survive the year and worry about future years; later.
The country has been run on 1 year planning for a long time now. I have little or no confidence that they are capable of doing it any other way.
PS : The increase in exit tax is a joke. There will be no benefit to the exchequer from it, any time soon. It's great if you are in the printing business but a nutty move for anyone else.
Thanks Gerard. I agree that the increases in many of the taxes will yield little or nothing.
Even the increased levies on income won't yield much if decreased consumer spending means greater unemployment.
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