4Steps2Recovery
Cutting vital public services, taxing low paid workers, cutting social welfare and capital investment are being presented as the only options to reduce the budget deficit.
The Community Platform rejects this notion and has launched a campaign to present real alternatives in the form of progressive tax reform that will both address the budget deficit and stimulate economic recovery.
Campaign Launch
The Campaign was launched by Fergus Finlay, Chief Executive, Barnardos on Monday 13th September
- Anne Costello of the Community Platform presented the proposals
- Dr. Tom O Connor, Lecturer in Economic and Social Policy, Cork Institute of Technology responded
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Action needed
Budget 2011 gives the Minister for Finance the power to introduce the changes the Community Platform proposes. It is crucial that to inform the Minister, the Government and all other political representatives just how important these proposals are.
Download a letter you can send to the Minister and TDs here in word or pdf
Community Platform press statements + media coverage
Tonight with Vincent Browne 18th November
Tonight with Vincent Browne 13th Sepember
Dr. Tom O Connor responds to Community Platform proposals
Proof too much wealth still remains untaxed
Proposal to make wealthy tax exiles pay their fair share is a step in the right direction
Disposable incomes of the low paid must be protected
It's time to demolish tax shelters for the wealthy
Scandinavia holds lesson in fairness for Ireland
Supporting materials
The bearable lightness of taxation
- Austerity cutbacks are a disaster - Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
- Commission on Taxation Report 2009 (Download here, External Link, PDF, 6MB)
- Study on indirect taxation
- Analysis of Tax Measures proposed by Labour, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin in their pre-budget submissions. Download here(PDF, 1MB)
- Analysis of Government Finance Acts, by TASC. Download here (PDF >1MB)
- Analysis of High Income Taxation 2008. Download here (PDF, <1MB)
- Irish Left Review, July 2010: Spending cuts or tax increases: What would Jesus Do?
- Sunday Tribune, August 1 2010: Top earners made €312M from tax breaks
Useful links
Debt and Development Coalition
Latest News
The Community Platform*, a network of 30 national community organisations today called on those involved in negotiating the new programme for government to pursue an alternative vision for Ireland - an Ireland where policies and actions are based on the values of social solidarity, justice, equality and sustainability.
Updates From Members
Debt and Development Coalition recently launched a new book 'Driving the Getaway Car? Ireland, Tax and Development', written on behalf of its member organisations by Dr Sheila Killian of the University of Limerick.
'Driving the Getaway Car?' explains how impoverished countries lose billions of euro through weak domestic tax collection capacities and through unjust international tax structures. Transfer pricing abuse is highlighted as a particular area of concern. This is when subsidiaries of the same multi-national company artificially set the prices of goods and services in order to minimise their tax bills, often through the use of secrecy jurisdictions, popularly known as tax havens. This illegal practice is very difficult to monitor and costs impoverished countries billions in lost tax revenue.