Mary sent a message to Michael O’Leary – CEO, Ryanair – Email Address that said:
Tax public sector pensions as BIK as they don't pay full market cost of same. They wanted bench marking with private sector but funnily enough they just cherry picked the nice bits and ignored the pitfalls of private sector employment.
If the private sector workers got a pension for which they didn’t pay a fraction of the true market cost of same, they would be hit with a BIK tax bill. Public sector have the tax rules ignored for them. Any benefit that private sector workers get, such as health insurance, company car etc, they pay full tax on the BIK element. The same tax rule should be applied to public sector workers too but there is clear discrimination in favour of them. It should be challenged in the courts.
I’ve written to TDs such as Joan, Michael, Katherine, Richard, Shane, etc etc asking how this discrimination can be ended but they all just give me the ‘run around’ . I guess it is a bit like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas as they are enjoying the benefits of this discrimination in the tax rule in their favour. If this was South Africa, the whites (public sector) control all the laws etc and the blacks (private sector) have no real say in getting laws applied equally to all.
In fact if the whole tax system was overhauled, then folks in receipt of social welfare should also be caught in the tax net as their income, between rent allowance, social welfare payments, back to school allowance etc etc adds up to a tidy sum and really it is just like ‘after tax’ income but without the need to actually go to work!