PAYE taxpayers can see the immediate impact of the 1999 Budget measures on their take-home pay from these tables.
Choose the table which covers your marital status. Then take the gross annual income closest to your own income in the first column and refer across the table to see how your take-home pay will change in the 1999/2000 tax year.
The impact of the Budget measures on single taxpayers and on married couples with one spouse earning is shown for different income levels. Private and public sector employees are shown separately because public sector employees pay PRSI contributions at 0.9 per cent compared to 4.5 per cent for private sector employees.
The figures include the impact of the restriction of the personal and PAYE tax allowances to the standard rate of tax.
Taken together, the significant increases in the personal allowances and the income band taxed at the standard rate and the overall reduction in the levies mean a significant improvement in take-home pay for lower paid workers.
For top-rate taxpayers the increases in the allowances and income bands offset the negative impact of the restriction of allowances to the standard tax rate. But there is a clawback in the increase in the PRSI ceiling.
In the current tax year employees paying tax at the top rate can claim their allowances at the top rate so that the current PAYE allowance of £800 is worth £192 to a worker paying tax at the standard rate but £368 to a worker paying tax at the top rate. The new PAYE allowance of £1,000 will be worth the same amount of £240 to all workers.
The widening of the standard tax rate income band by £4,000 to £14,000 for a single person and by £8,000 to £28,000 for a married couple will benefit all taxpayers.
Workers earning between £10,750 and £11,000 will benefit particularly from the increase in the income floor for payment of the health levy. They will no longer have to pay the levy which will mean a tax saving of two per cent of income in 1999/2000.
Taxpayers with children will benefit from the increases in child benefit.