Who Can We Tax Next?

21st Oct 2008

Government Doughnut on Taxes
Danny Elbow

So now that the government up in Dublin have done a spectacular u-turn on medical cards for the elderly that would impress even the most flamboyant doughnut-skidding boyracer, what will they have the cheek to penny pinch on next?

A tax inspector monitors a potential tax cheat while she receives her first communion.

Communion Money Tax
Are this government going to stand by while parents and relatives give FREE handouts to their children? This movement of money is currently untaxed and could be looked into by the Department of Finance instead of addressing the public sector elephant-in-the-room.

Instead of waiting until they get their first real job children making their communion should be issued with an RSI number and a government official could accompany each child as they tour their relatives' houses on the big day.

Any "dig-outs" to the little ones from uncles and aunts will have to be registered with the Revenue Commissioners and the appropriate income tax rates will apply. This could earn a fortune for the exchequer allowing the country to build all sorts of fantastic rail systems in Dublin city centre.

Spongers: Tax the both of 'em.

Charity Tax
Government ministers will be furious when they find that the most vulnerable in society are getting cash payouts, subsidised housing and a few bowls of warm soup a week.

On top of that young students from SHARE are spending up to four hours a week visiting old folks and chatting to them - for no fee. This is preposterous! Old people should live in garden sheds and be made to sit alone to watch horribly patronising afternoon shows about knitting jumpers and commodes.

Breast Feeding Tax
A woman's natural food supply could be spun as an unfair advantage on those who have to buy bottles and milk for their young ones. The HSE is so overloaded with administrators that a few of those sitting around offices filling out expense and mileage forms could be retrained as breast milk inspectors.

The HSE gombeens would be dispatched to monitor new-mothers and slap a tax on their biological assets. If the government are willing to whip the medical card off our dear old wrinklies then this is hardly outside the bounds of possibility.

Foxy Tax
Everybody claims to like them but nobody really wants to be one. They only make up a small percentage of the population and are unlikely to have sufficient electoral sway to threaten the government so let's tax the orange ones. It makes as much sense as grabbing a medical card out of the hand of a feeble old man shuffling into his G.P. to get his ticker checked but we've been down that road already.

Begging Tax
If car park spaces are fair game for a new tax then any space on our streets could have a tax unleashed on it. Anyone making dosh by standing or sitting on the streets would have to pay a 20% levy on all earnings.

This would put beggars in the awkward position of having coin monitors inserted into their begging cups. The electronic devices that would keep tabs on desperately poor homeless alcoholics would be made from the remains of the infamous electronic voting machines. The revenue would be used to bail out the banks who now find themselves in hot water having put the general public in hot water for ten years.

Oxygen Tax
The shrewdness of this one will literally take your breathe away. With the Greens in government it seems like a good excuse to tax anything to do with the environment.

The entire public are breathing in free air and the average person breathes about 25,000 times per day. The government could introduce an inhalation tax which would force citizens to fork out every time they suck in some air.

Those under financial pressure will have to be economical with their breathing too - perhaps the impoverished can train themselves to take one large breathe before every meal and one before bedtime to save cash and keep their mortgage payments up.

That'll be 50 cent a breath bobbila.

The hardest hit will those with respiratory problems and we may see an increase in the number of people dying from holding their breath as they're bank accounts run close to empty.

This regulation will leave a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere to counteract all that carbon monoxide and thereby reduce the giant fine about to be imposed on the country because the government has done hardly anything meaningful to counteract climate change.

Voting Tax
The cost of printing ballot papers, providing sharpened pencils and paying the grumpy people who man polling stations on election day could all be used as excuses to slap a fifty euro entry fee on entering a voting booth on election day.

What's more only those who could afford it would come out to vote: property developers, hospital consultants, bankers and ministers themselves. With such a spectrum of Budget 2008 beneficiaries the ruling parties will remained firmly fastened into their seats in Leinster House while raising an additional few bob for the country's coffers.