Politics
Pre-USC, 45 per cent of workers weren’t paying any income tax
The troika wanted the USC brought in and when it was, it captured 88 per cent of workers in the tax net
When Brian Lenihan, the former Minister for Finance, introduced the Universal Social Charge in December 2010, there was a need for the state to boost tax revenues, which had collapsed following the end of the Celtic Tiger property boom.
The country had entered the troika bailout programme and Lenihan sold the USC to Fianna Fáil backbenchers as a merger of the health and income levies, but the tax, or levy as he preferred to call ...
