Brief look at introduction of Income tax to Ireland

History and Lessons that can be learned about tax and the way society is structured:

In 1799 The English prime minister William Pitt who was also the chanchellor (and the youngest prime minister at 24) decided that income tax would be a great idea so they brought it into law for the empire so that they could finance a great war between Britan and the french under the leadership of the one and only Napoleon (now you know who to blame) It was based around schedules which reflected in descending order the class system of the population. This class system is still used today although the top few having been in effect abolished. So it started with a schedule for Landlords (the top class) then farmers then the privileged with annuities and then the self employed and then the poor trades people.
Capital Gains tax was introduced in Ireland in 1975 so up until then you could avoid paying tax (to some degree) by making sure you lived of money you got from selling assets and capital transactions (once again favoring the richer in society)
A detailed analysis of the current tax system would also in my opinion reflect a built in class system.
Anyway so now you know who to blame needless to say if I recall correctly William Pitt left office in 1801. In 1978 when the tax was announced it was estimated that 10 million pounds would be taken in but in fact only 6 million was taken. So even back then the departments of finance weren't the best at projections.

Even still some lessons can be learned from history because even today capital gains tax is lower than the high rate of income tax and therefore one way of reducing tax liabilities is to make sure a transaction is classed as capital in nature (i.e a one off transaction as part of an investment or an emergency sale) rather than as a trade. This was reflected in the celtic tiger when the revenue went after people for income tax for selling house they had bought and moved into and done up and then sold on. (they weren't always successful in getting this classed as income tax as a it may be shown to have not meet some of the badges of trade if set up correctly).
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Anyway so that a bit of history, Hope the dates are correct been a long time since i studied history.
Frank McGivney & Co Ltd, Chartered Management Accountants 38 Cherryhill Court, Kells, Co Meath Ireland 0469293891