How the Irish Government is handling its finances

During the secondary shutdown across Europe last December, the imposition of Level 5 restrictions has led to the fall of vax receipts seen this past January. Total tax revenue for the month of January 2021 was down nearly 9% compared to previous months, coming up to be around €520 million €5.4 billion.

Of the tax receipts, the VAT receipts have been hit the hardest. This largely is due to the impact of the decrease in consumed goods over the traditionally hectic Christmas period. In addition, there has been a continuous drop in excise duty, stamp duty, and corporation tax. The one exemption to all this would be the Stat’s income tax, which is their largest tax channel. This channel has performed better thane expected, which has become a common occurrence. The income taxes generated over €2.3 billion in January alone, which is up around 4% compared to the same month in 2020.

In forecasting how the economy will move in the future, the department states the suspension of its normal monthly tax profiles will soon be implemented. This is largely …

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Negative Rates the Banks are enforcing

In 2020, Irish citizens managed to put nearly €13.4 billion into banks and credit unions, looking to take advantage of savers. This has driven the household deposit total to up to an all-time high of €124 billion. The build-up in these deposits will stay, but banks are continuously looking to pass on charges they face from the European Central Bank.

The reason why banks are looking to charge negative interest is that banks have been paying the European Central bank to hold their excess funds. In a sense, the money earned from these accounts is not being used to lend out to borrowers and generate revenue for the banks themselves. In addition, the ECB rates have become vegetive as a result to encourage more lending in the market to combat the lull in activity in the market due to COVID. This means that you’re essentially paying your bank to hold your savings, but not getting any return by doing so.

Currently, the only organizations that will be paying negative rates would include businesses, pension funds, and credit unions. The rates …

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AIB conforms to Industry Standards in drawing a mortgage

The AIB has implemented regulations that have started to severely lower the time that it allows potential home buyers to look from a new home. This time frame went from 12 months to half of that. The reasoning the AIB has given for this is that it increases the approval in principle.

Two weeks ago, on January 15th, AIB made up of around 33% of the mortgage market. The bank announced that it will no longer allow the individuals who received mortgage approval 12 months ago to draw down their loans. These individuals will instead have to do so within 6 months, which is the normal time frame for most other banks within the market. The change is said to only apply to new applicants and that if you were an individual that applied in the 12-month period before January 15th of this year, the 12-month period will still apply to you.

AIB has previously one of the only banks to offer an extended amount of time for consumers to draw down a mortgage, which was one of its largest …

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Red flag Financial words you should know

Your knowledge is the best defence when it comes to your money.  Therefore, you need to learn tactics and these words to best defend your finances from those who want to trick you. You know best about how you spend, save, and invest your money from the moment you laid on your first euro. These are some words that are completely RED FLAGS.

Deferred Interest

This situation pops up everywhere you go on ads like, “Buy this twenty-five thousand euro car at zero per cent interest rates for twenty-four months!”. But you need to know what type of interest they are offering customers during these situations. There are two main types, waived and deferred. Waived means zero per cent interest rates free and clear, meaning you will not need to pay any insurance on that car. While deferred means customers will still need to pay the interest. If customers do not pay off the amount by the end of twenty-four months or miss a payment …

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Comparing is making us poor.

Look at his new Rolex watch! Look at her new handbag! Everyone compares one another on things they own, wear, eat, and much more. Especially with the times right now with everyone connected through the internet, it is hard to avoid. We are constantly on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube looking at our peers to evaluate how well we are doing in life. We decide our value based on attractiveness, wellbeing, and success as if it measures up against others.

Most of our decision making is influenced by what our friends and family spend and what you think of how they perceive us. Are your expenses really motivated by your actual needs or wants or are they trying to keep up with your peers? Many people spend money they have not earned to buy things they don’t really want just to impress the people they do not like. Do you really want it? Buying things that are not useful or have purpose collects dust and makes our money fly out the window just as well as our value. We know if …

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Ireland’s automatic stabilizers impact on the recovery from COVID

After the 2008 global financial crisis, Ireland’s tax and welfare system aimed to reduce income inequality within its citizens and succeeded in doing so. A research was done by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that the automatic stabilizers implemented created a reduction in tax and an increase in welfare payments from the State. This all led to an offset in the rise of income equality.

These automatic stabilizers, which are usually considered a country’s economy’s first line of defence in a financial crisis, reduced inequality at more than just the governmental policies level. Even during the COVID pandemic, many governments have gone a step further with the implementation of the automatic stabilizers by using them as a buffer against the financial shock, and in doing so have introduced a system of direct wage supports to combat the fallen employment rate experience globally.

Recent studies have looked further into the impacts of the tax and benefit policy on income equality in five of the euro zones that were hit the worst economically in the COVID pandemic. These zones …

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How one-bed apartments are destroying Dublin’s docklands

With the hit of the pandemic, many couples have begun disapproving of one-bedroom apartments due to the lack of space to work remotely and live. This has led to many of the properties near the Dublin docklands to drop in demand, essentially leading to that market collapsing on itself.

A report has shown that the rent has fallen an average of 13% on these properties since March of 2020, and even more so than that at the upper ends of the market. But while much of the short-term rentals for these properties fell, the report showed that the supply of the long-term rental units more than doubled. This, in combination with the reduced demand overall due to the COVID restrictions and limiting travelling, has cased the rent to fall in the second the third quarter of last year. The average rent for the properties was €2,312 per month, 6.97% lower than in 2019.

At the end of 2020, during the fourth quarter, the rent costs were able to stabilize due to rising demands mainly fueled by the returning of technology …

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GameStop stock and what’s happening with it

What happened this past week with GameStop’s stock was unprecedented. And markets show that the three largest shareholders in GameStop’s stock have made nearly 2 billion dollars (1.65 billion euro) from the company’s stock rising this past week. The stock hit its high this past Wednesday at $354.83 and rose again on Thursday.

As the largest stockholder of GameStop, Mr Cohen’s now worth a staggering 1.4 billion dollars. In the last two weeks, with the rising of the stock, we calculated his net worth to increase an aver of around 90 million dollars a day. The GameStop Stock has increased more than 1,550% this year.

This sudden increase in the stock has never been seen before. Sure, we saw Tesla grow a hundred times over in the past year, but never has a stock increased so fast continuously in the timespan of a matter of days. On the social media platform Reddit, many small investors have started boasting about their gains from beating Wall Street and the amount of revenue they were able to generate if they caught wind of …

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How will the Government deal with the national debt

According to a recent study done, the Ireland government will be estimated to be able to absorb around 17% of the spike in the State’s level of debt predicted to occur with the pandemic. There is estimated to be a growth of €239 billion within the next two years as the economy continues to battle with COVID’s repercussions. This will not only affect government actions and reach into markets and industries but may mean that there will be uncertainties with regulations regarding COVID restrictions.

Overall, this means that there will be nearly €47,000 being owned by the government to international creditors for every citizen within the state by the end of 2020. This accumulates to billions of debt inherited by the government. This is not just Ireland, but many countries across Europe, driven mostly by the European Central Bank in its bond-buying programs.

Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, the Irish government has responded to its economic and social environment quickly in relation to countries globally and have set aside large series of supports to lessen its impacts on …

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Will working at home be a norm to stay?

No one would have imagined that society would be able to shift the majority of jobs to working virtual and at home. But with the COVID pandemic, exactly that has happened. But not everyone is happy with this change. Many individuals find working at home not as efficient, but many more people are looking forwards to keep on living this lifestyle even after quarantine ends.

This means that businesses and the government may just have to find a way to establish a more legitimate framework to keep this process, rather than think of this situation as a temporary response to the global pandemic. But this begs the questions: will employers really allow employees to be able to work remotely on a permanent basis? And if that is the case then who will be paying for the costs of working?

Recently the government passed legislation on working at home which legislated the “right” to be able to request to work from home from your employers. This does not mean that all jobs and occupations will have this benefit, nor does the …

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