Big Four accounting firm also wants standard VAT rate to be cut to 21% and higher rate income tax threshold raised to €50,000Deloitte wants the Government to introduce tapered CGT reliefs, saying the Republic’s 33% rate is the sixth-highest among European OECD members. Photograph: iStock
A reduced CGT rate of 10 per cent applies to chargeable gains, up to a lifetime limit of €1 million, on certain eligible assets, predominately the assets of a trading company. It applies to individuals who have been a full-time employee or director and who have owned at least 5 per cent of the shares in the company for three consecutive years in the five years before disposal.
“It provides a strong incentive to set up a business in which to retain profits, putting pressure on anti-avoidance rules which attempt to define when companies are ‘artificial’ avoidance devices,” economists Barra Roantree and Theano Kakoulido wrote at the time. “Preferential capital gains rates are often defended as essential to reward difficult and risky entrepreneurial activity,” the report highlighted. “But the difficulty and risk associated with entrepreneurship do not in themselves justify favourable tax treatment as these are typically rewarded through a higher pretax return.