Madam, - Readers may be interested to hear that there has been a stealth tax in existence for some years whereby DIRT deducted on the interest on money awarded by the courts to injured children cannot be reclaimed, even though the child obviously has no tax liability. In the case of court awards to minors, the courts look after the award until the child becomes 18, and neither the child nor the parents has any say in how the money is invested.
In a written reply on May 4th in response to questions from several TDs on this issue, the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, said he had "no plans at present to extend the present DIRT repayment rules to cover the cases referred to in the questions".
What kind of society taxes injured children?
The tax foregone by rectifying this anomaly would be insignificant in the context of the total tax take. It was surely never the intention of our legislators when they brought in the DIRT tax to tax injured children - just an oversight.
Healthy children would normally have no deposit interest income and therefore DIRT would not be relevant. TDs overlooked the possibility that injured children with court awards could have such income.
My own daughter is one such tax victim needing every penny of her award to fund medical expenses still to come.
If she were a horse or a racecourse, would a tax refund be forthcoming?
- Yours, etc.,
ENID O'DOWD, Moyne Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.