THE TAX cuts delivered by Mr Quinn yesterday favoured the well-off and will increase rather than decrease income inequality, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) said last night.
The organisation said it had tested the main measures of the Budget, and was unhappy with several aspects.
While it welcomed the increase in personal tax allowances, the INOU said, the move widened the gap between rich and poor.
"The measure is worth £120 a year to higher earners (£240 if married), but only £65 to a low earner (£130 if married)," the group said.
The INOU argued that increases in personal allowances should be given only at the standard rate, so that every taxpayer would benefit equally. This would have allowed a larger increase in personal allowances for the same expenditure, it continued.
The widening of the standard band was also contrary to the most effective way of helping the lower paid, the INOU said.
"Only the top 34 per cent of PAYE earners will get any benefit from this at all," the organisation argued. "To some extent it was needed to offset the last stage of standard rating of mortgage interest relief and for index linking, but it further increases income inequality"
On the reduction in the standard rate of tax from 27 to 26 per cent, the INOU said that workers earning between £7,000 and £9,000 would have benefited more by the money being spent on raising personal allowances preferably at the same rate.
All those above this level gained equally from this measure, the organisation argued.
The INOU also welcomed the decrease in employees' PRSI from 5.5 to 4.5 per cent.
"The benefits of this go to all taxpayers, so while it is not of specific benefit to the lower paid it is the most evenly distributed of all the tax/PRSI cuts," the INOU added.
The health and training levies of 2.25 of gross wages will now be payable only on earnings exceeding £197, rather than at £188, the body pointed out.
"This is a threshold over which the levies become payable on all earnings, creating a substantial poverty trap," the INOU said.
"This move is a welcome development for lower-paid workers by moving the poverty trap upwards, but does not address the structural problems that create the trap in the first place.
On job creation, the INOU said that in all budgets prior to 1995, the Minister of Finance gave projections for unemployment at the end of the budget year in terms of the Live Register.
"In 1995 Quinn swapped from the Live Register to the Labour Force Survey for his projections. In the 1997 budget, for the first time, no projection of unemployment is given at all," the INOU concluded.