The 0.6% pensions levy is continuing to provide ample headlines with attention now turning on how people might be able to soften the blow, pending a likely legal challenge to the constitutionality of the measure.
It would appear the campaign against the levy is beginning to gain real momentum, according to The Sunday Times, which devotes a full page to the issue.
With many people transferring money out of Ireland to foreign banks, some will be considering going the whole hog and leaving altogether. The Sunday Times says France could be about to add yet another reason for wealthy individuals to relocate there by unveiling new plans for a wealth tax overhaul next year.
A group of lawyers preparing to mount a constitutional challenge to the bankruptcy laws are likely to base their arguments on the issue of proportionality, according to The Sunday Business Post.
Compulsory pensions are back on the Government agenda, according to a report in The Sunday Times.
Joan Burton, the minister for social protection, told a conference during the week the Government wanted to give middle-income earners an incentive to save for retirement.
The Eircom Employee Share Trust (ESOT), which owns 35% of the telco, is in talks with the Department of Finance to extend its tax breaks that are due to expire in 2014, according to The Sunday Times.
The row rumbles on over the controversial pensions levy to fund the Government’s Jobs Initiative with stark warnings about a flight of capital from Irish banks as an unintended consequence.
Although Irish institutions now have to pay the best deposit rates in Europe just to maintain funds here, they are still falling behind soaring inflation.
Lawyers and actuaries are busy advising clients how to mitigate or even avoid the 0.6% pension levy according to Jill Kerby in The Sunday Times, who is telling people with private pensions to ask their trustees, administrators or advisers about the effect of the levy on their projected incomes in retirement.
The number of claims for tax relief on service charges has risen dramatically since the beginning of the year, according to The Sunday Business Post.
In addition to the recent imposition of the Pension Levy, the Finance Bill 2011 reduced the maximum pension fund size. The maximum allowable pension fund on retirement for tax purposes (known as the Standard Fund Threshold (SFT)), has been reduced from €5.4 million to €2.3 million.
It may have been well flagged by www.taxation.ie over the past weeks, but this weekend the front pages of the newspapers eventually caught up. The broadsheets are awash with the backlash generated by the Government’s unprecedented raid on private pensions to fund its Jobs Initiative announced on Tuesday.
And he hasn’t gone away, you know. Former Sindo business editor turned TD Shane Ross pens a caustic piece for his former employer expanding on his very public denunciations of pension fund managers in the dail chamber during the week.
The Sindo is nothing if not a broad church – it is one of the hallmarks of its enduring success. One of those to whom Ross is probably referring – the chief executive of Standard Life Ireland Nigel Dunne – writes elsewhere in the same newspaper of a need to rebalance the 0.6% grab to include public sector workers.