DUBLIN: Ireland’s finance minister sought to raise more than 800 million euros in extra revenue in a budget yesterday to give taxpayers a “modest” break and help tackle a housing crisis. He also sought to balance the state’s books for the first time in a decade.
Ireland started reversing years of savage spending cuts and tax hikes in 2014 – about the time its economy began to rebound sharply from a deep financial crisis. In the event, he boosted the budget package to 1.2 billion euros from the mere 350 million available chiefly through a four percentage point increase in stamp duty on commercial property, ensuring income tax cuts will not go into one pocket and come out the other.
