Sir, – At a time of full employment, high inflation and scarcity of resources, Alan Murray, tax partner at Mazars, believes Ireland could gain significantly by attracting very rich individuals fleeing the UK’s clampdown on non-domiciled tax residents (“Changes to UK non-dom rules could result in wealthy elite moving their tax residence to Ireland”, Business, January 29th). These individuals are not businesses looking to generate economic output and, given they will only pay tax on income generated in Ireland, I fail to see how we could gain significantly from their presence here. We have a shortage of skilled workers in many areas of the economy and so it seems to me the only area in which they could contribute is VAT on their purchases, but this is likely to have a negative effect on an already volatile inflation situation.
Notwithstanding the obvious social cohesion concerns arising out of the image of obscenely wealthy exiles home-hopping jurisdictions to avoid paying tax, I’d prefer to have “ordinary’” people with real skills in health, social care, construction and technology migrate here to improve aspects of all our lives. – Yours, etc,
CIAN CARLIN,
Carlingford,
Co Louth.