Rick Lowe
Well the business community now knows that June 1 is the implementation date for an increase in the payroll tax. See this Tribune story...
It's an increase of 1%, split between employer and employee raising the total tax to 9.8% of income - 5.9% for the employer and 3.9% for the employee.
This is to provide funds for a permanent unemployment scheme. When the Government set out to help those persons most affected by the economic downturn in late 2008, it was a temporary programme. Now it's permanent.
It's not that people don't deserve to be helped, it's how we go about it and the burden we leave to our children and grand children that concerns me most.
And quite honestly, human nature being what it is, we will attempt to stay on unemployment for as long as we can, unless we're cut off. So this will undoubtedly lead to over utilisation of the NIB fund, helping deplete it sooner, rather than later.
It's a pity that we so easily buy into the argument that there is something for nothing. A notion that is far too easily promoted by the political class.
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