There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about the scale of tax reliefs in Ireland and I’ve been planning to write a couple of posts on this topic. In relation to this issue, an opinion that is commonly expressed by leading figures in the Irish media is that the very richest in Ireland pay very little in tax because of these reliefs.
The NTMA has released its review of its 2009 activities. Link here.
In relation to the coming year, the report says that “The NTMA plans to raise up to €20 billion in the bond markets in 2010. This requirement is significantly less than in 2009 because of a smaller projected Exchequer deficit of €18.7 billion and a lower refinancing requirement of €1.2 billion.”
These figures do not include any allowance for any borrowing that may be triggered by bank recapitalisation requirements. That said, the National Pension Reserve Fund had a good year thanks to the rise in international stock markets and its value now stands at €22.3 billion. Excluding the €7 billion held in preference shares in AIB and BOI, this leaves €15 billion that could, potentially, be used to recapitalise the banks without borrowing.
Just when it seems like everyone is suffering a pay cut because of the fiscal crisis, along comes a feel-good story like this one.
The December Exchequer returns have now been published. The Exchequer deficit for 2009 was €24.6 billion, almost twice the level recorded in 2008. That said, the figures came in a bit better than most people expected a number of months ago, which is good news.
As an aside, I’d note that this outcome clearly falls somewhat short of the “close to €30 billion” deficit mentioned in the letter signed by the 46 economists in August. As I noted at the time, I think this was pretty reasonable in the context of what was known then. Of course, this figure was not an important part of the letter. The substance of the letter related to NAMA and the only point of the deficit references, as I understood it, was to put the risk of NAMA losses in a context.
I have little doubt now that the comments section here will soon contain denunciations of the famed “46” declaring them to be all sorts of evil. But then flame-throwing trolls are an unfortunate part of any blog that allows comments.
Pat McArdle’s review of the economic year contained the following description of the banking crisis: