As with all professions, there are certain expressions in the tax world that can raise the hackles depending on your point of view. "Amnesty" is one such term. "Retrospection" is another.
The doubling of the income levy, combined with the alteration of the bands at which the levies are to apply, has led to the notion of a composite rate for the 2009 year of assessment. In a nutshell, irrespective of the timing of the income receipt, the composite rate will apply. So the 1% levy of 1 cent paid on 1 euro of income received prior to 1 May will not in the final reckoning suffice. It will, under the composite arrangement, be 1.67 cent. Retrospective taxation?
This doesn't look right, and the initial reaction of many practitioners who looked at the Financial Resolution in detail was that a mistake had been made. Multiplication shouldn't take precedence over addition, and the anomaly was a drafting error which doubtless would be corrected in the forthcoming Finance Bill. Not so, according to Revenue when we discussed the matter with them at TALC last Friday. This was done as an anti-avoidance measure, designed to catch accelerated payments made to avoid the imposition of a higher levy rate after 1 May.
The particular downside here is that for many employees in our declining economy, income for 2009 will be higher in the first four months of the year than in the last eight. There's neither acceleration nor avoidance involved, just the harsh economic reality.
As a blunt instrument for tax collection, the Income Levy must be wielded very carefully, and perhaps this composite rate approach needs more careful thought. There's also the wider reputational issue for Ireland Inc of the application of retrospective taxation.
It can be argued that the composite rate might not be regarded as retrospective insofar as it applies within the same year of assessment. But this doesn't really wash, not least because the Financial Resolution quite easily distinguishes between the first four and last eight months of the year for the purposes of the weekly threshold. The composite rate charge doesn't have to be applied this way.
Nor does the justification that this is an anti avoidance measure ring true. In the past, anti avoidance measures have featured in Finance Bills, and have had retrospective effect. But these were signalled in advance, usually in a public statement by the Minister for Finance, that measures to address a particular situation would be applied in a forthcoming Bill.