The average-earning farmer pays just a quarter of the tax paid by the average PAYE worker despite having higher disposable income, according to the Democratic Left finance spokesman, Mr Pat Rabbitte.
Attacking the tax-paying record of farmers yesterday, Mr Rabbitte demanded that they pay a "fair contribution" and said that their leaders had "a hard neck" in seeking more tax concessions.
In a statement he called on the Minister for Finance to use the forthcoming Budget to begin closing the gap between PAYE workers and farmers, which had widened over the past eight years.
However, the Irish Farmers' Association rejected Mr Rabbitte's criticisms, stating: "Revenue tax-take statistics are deliberately misinterpreted to bolster a tired, divisive argument which shows little understanding of the nature of the tax system."
The chairman of the IFA's farm business committee, Mr John Fitzsimons, said that the figures reflected the reality that average farm incomes had consistently lagged behind those of industry and the public service.
Mr Rabbitte said that in 1989 the average tax paid by a PAYE worker was £3,122 while that for a farmer was £804. "By 1996 the average tax paid by a PAYE worker was £4,308 while that of a farmer was £1,028. In the intervening seven years the tax take from the PAYE worker has increased by £1,186 while that from a farmer has grown by just £224."
These figures were given in a reply to a Dail question last week. Yet the most recent household budget survey undertaken by the Central Statistics Office showed that the average weekly farm household disposable income in 1994/95 was £302.07, compared to £292.73 in urban areas. "According to the survey, farmers live in bigger, newer houses and own more cars and phones than their urban counterparts", Mr Rabbitte said.
The average tax payments made by farmers and PAYE workers "bear absolutely no relationship to the income levels of the two groups and demonstrate once again the disproportionate share of the tax burden carried by PAYE workers and others", he went on. Over the years, the gap between the amount of tax paid by PAYE workers and the self-employed had been virtually closed, but nothing had been done to address the "minuscule" contribution from farmers.
Mr Rabbitte said he acknowledged that there were many farmers who earned very modest incomes and that part-time farmers with other jobs paid tax on the same basis as PAYE workers. "But that does not explain the huge disparity in the tax take when the income from farming has so consistently been increasing over recent years."
He said that successive governments had ducked the farmer taxation issue. "Farm organisation leaders have a hard neck to demand extension of the PAYE personal allowance to farmers. Not only should Minister McCreevy ignore this demand, but he should tighten up the various `write-offs' available to farmers until such time as they make a fair contribution, proportionate to their incomes.
"Farm rhetoric, perhaps heightened by leadership elections, claims they see no evidence of a `Celtic Tiger'. Compared to many thousands of my constituents, large farmers have been on the back of the `Celtic Tiger' for many years, and certainly before it was sighted in urban Ireland."
For the IFA, Mr Fitzsimons accused Mr Rabbitte of launching a "seasonal attack" on farmers in a year when farm incomes were expected to fall by up to 6 per cent. He dismissed Mr Rabbitte's complaints as "an unwarranted attack on legitimate tax-allowable business costs without which investment could not take place and farm business would fail".
He claimed that Mr Rabbitte had ignored the fact that the average tax paid by farmers liable for tax on their farm profits had amounted to almost £2,500 for 1996.