COUNTY VIEW: Paying the Sinn Féin piper

It’s not possible to please all of the people all of the time, a truth which means that, in laying out their financial strategies, political parties have learned to tread gingerly. Taking from the rich to give to the poor may look like a surefire way to win popularity, but there is a limit to how far you can squeeze the orange at one end to produce more juice at the other.
As Sinn Féin has learned over the recent past, favouring one sector can easily lead to alienating the other, and pinning your hopes on a Robin Hood policy of wealth distribution is not as easy as it sounds.
The party’s tax policy is in general grounded in that its better – and far more electorally popular – to tax the rich in order to help the poor. On the other hand, coming down too heavily on the rich might well risk them folding their tents and taking themselves away to more agreeable tax climes, so spoiling the original calculations on which the division of wealth was based.
All of this can explain why Davy Stockbrokers was recruited by Sinn Féin to host a series of meetings in London of investors, financiers and global wealth managers, where any fears over the wealth policies of a future Sinn Féin led government could be allayed. The idea was to assure global investors that, whatever about public posturing, Sinn Féin in government would do nothing to frighten the horses. The message to the billionaire club was, as it was put succinctly, that Sinn Féin would be ‘more New Labour under a Tony Blair, less left wing under a Jeremy Corbyn’.
It was, by all accounts, a message that went down well. There had been growing alarm in the wider financial world that Sinn Féin policies might make life difficult for multi-national corporations and the executives they employ. It was feared that these same high-earning individuals would find themselves in the firing line if the tax-the-rich threats were implemented to the degree first threatened. That potential danger seems to have passed – in 2017, Sinn Féin was proposing a hefty 7 percent super levy on all earnings over €100,000. That measure has since been watered down to a less unreasonable (in the eyes of the super earners), 3 percent on income over €140,000.
There are other measures in the Sinn Féin tax basket which may be similarly quietly dropped if and when the party is faced with the actual reality of running the country.
Promises to phase out the local property tax and bringing in a charge on second homes could be put on the long finger. Its proposal to increase inheritance tax at a time when the clamour – likely to be acceded to in the forthcoming budget – is for the opposite to happen, looks like cutting a stick to beat itself with. And the idea of making employers pay more in PRSI contributions is unlikely to go much further than an aspiration.
Sinn Féin’s overarching aim is that the average lower-paid worker will be some €400 a year better off. And what is there not to like about that? The crux is that in order to pay Peter more you have to take more off Paul, whose tolerance for becoming his brother’s financial keeper will only stretch so far.
As for now, the party can only look on in envy as the present government, awash with money, prepares for a budget which is certain to be generous enough to pave the way into the coming general election. And even though prudence remains the watchword of the ministerial duo who hold the purse strings, the Irish citizen can confidently expect that it will be like an early Christmas when the gifts are unwrapped come October.