It was a nice coincidence which saw news that the US billionaire investor Warren Buffett is to give away most of his wealth appear on the same day that 43 Irish people earning €1 million were revealed to have paid under 5 per cent tax.
In 2002 the State's top 400 earners paid an effective tax rate of 24.4 per cent - less than the average PAYE taxpayer. A review of tax schemes carried out for the Department of Finance this year finds the renewal and development schemes typically used were a dubious and expensive way of achieving public policy objectives, when the amount of taxation forgone is calculated.
All the more is this the case when account is taken of the paltry sums rich Irish people return to the public domain through philanthropy, compared to their counterparts in the United States. There the non-profit sector is estimated to have averaged 1.85 per cent of gross national product in recent years, compared to 0.85 per cent in the United Kingdom, 0.32 per cent in France and 0.13 per cent in Germany.
Up-to-date estimates for Ireland suggest we are somewhere between the UK and continental figures, when account is taken of individual and corporate philanthropy. Last year, organisers of Irish-American fund-raising organisations said they were meeting donor resistance in the US when asking for money to be spent in Ireland because this is such a rich society. "What are the Irish doing, what's happening in Ireland?", one asked.
Mr Buffett's view of philanthropy is a far remove from that of Ireland's richest individuals - insofar as they have been expressed coherently or at all. He is to give more than €24 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, thereby doubling its endowment and making it the world's largest philanthropic agency. He believes "huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should, in large part, be returned to society". As for his children it is "neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money" when they have all the advantages anyway "in terms of how they grow up and the opportunities they have for education, including what they learn at home".
His is an eccentric egalitarian philosophy for a highly unequal society. The share of aggregate US income going to the highest-earning 1 per cent of Americans has doubled from 8 per cent in 1980 to 16 per cent in 2004. Similar trends are visible here, according to yesterday's CSO annual report.
Philanthropy has a valid role in humanitarian and economic innovation. It has begun to have a place which is unquantified in this State. But it cannot and should not substitute for a fair and equitable policy towards public taxation and redistribution of resources. A system with incentives that see the rich pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than their less well-off fellow citizens is surely in need of reform.