Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 19 May 2026
385. Deputy Emer Currie asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance the amount of money it is estimated will be collected from the USC this year; and to provide as good an estimate as possible of the amount that would have been raised had the reductions and changes introduced from 2012 onwards; and 2016 onwards had not been made. [36683/26]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, the Universal Social Charge (USC) was designed and incorporated into the Irish taxation system in 2011 to replace the Health and Income Levies. Its primary purpose was to widen the tax base and to provide a steady income to the Exchequer to provide funding for public services.
The USC is an individualised tax, meaning that a person’s liability to the tax is determined on the basis of a person’s own individual income and personal circumstances. It is a more sustainable charge than those it replaced and is applied at a low rate on a wide base, which ensures that it is a stable and sustainable source of revenue for the State.
The USC is projected to total approximately €5.9 billion in 2026. It is important to note that a number of variables have changed over this period, the combination of which makes overall comparisons challenging. For example, the number of taxpayer units has increased from 2.1 million in 2012 to an estimated 3.5 million for 2026, there has been wage growth over this period and as the Deputy has noted there have been significant structural changes to the USC since inception.
All tax policy measures announced in the Budget are set out in the Tax Policy Changes document published on Budget Day. The document provides the estimated costings of the measures on a first year and full year basis, based on the most up to date information at the time when the measure is announced. The document also includes a high-level description of each tax measure.
The Budget 2026 Tax Policy Changes document can be located at the following link:
www.gov.ie/en/department-of-finance/publications/budget-2026-taxation-measures/.
The Tax Policy Changes documents for Budget 2012 to 2025 can be located on the Budget website for each respective year:
www.gov.ie/en/department-of-finance/collections/previous-budgets/.
Revenue maintains a micro-simulation tool, Tax Modeller, in order to estimate the impact to the Exchequer of changes associated with income tax policy. This model uses data from tax returns for the latest year for which data is available for all taxpayer types (the base year data), and the model is structured to estimate tax liabilities in the next Budget year (the target year), by applying various macro-economic parameters such as adjusting for income and population changes in the interim from the base year to the target year.
I am advised by Revenue that the Tax Modeller is not structured to retrospectively estimate liabilities for multiple years and therefore it is not possible to estimate the USC liabilities that would have arisen for each of those years had the policy not been amended. While each change was costed at the time of its introduction, that cost related to the Budget year of its introduction, and the cost in subsequent years would vary depending on the changes in incomes and population in those years.
