“Increasing Capital Gains Tax Is a Direct Attack on the Very People Who Drive Investment and Job Creation”

Ken O’Flynn TD Statement on Proposed Increases to Capital Gains Tax:

I am deeply concerned by reports that the Department of Finance is considering a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) increase in the upcoming Budget. If pursued, this measure would represent not only an economic misstep, but a fundamental misreading of what fairness truly means in a functioning republic.

Let us be clear: CGT is not a tax on extravagance — it is a tax on enterprise. It affects farmers seeking to pass on land, shopkeepers winding down after a lifetime of work, small developers reinvesting in housing, and family businesses transitioning between generations. These are not anonymous capital flows on spreadsheets. These are people who contribute daily to their communities and the real economy.

At a time when housing is scarce, inflation remains stubborn, and the cost of doing business is suffocatingly high, it is baffling that the Government would contemplate disincentivising the very people who build, invest, and sustain employment.

The rhetoric of “fairness” has become a convenient political cover for a failure to confront structural inefficiencies and bureaucratic waste. The hard truth is this: our taxation system already leans heavily on the compliant middle — on those who work, save, and plan. Raising CGT may win applause from some ideological corners, but it will do nothing to address housing delivery, rural decline, or SME stagnation. In fact, it will make all three worse.

The true measure of a republic is not how much it taxes success, but how it enables its citizens to achieve it. Punishing those who build, invest, and pass on their work is not fairness — it is economic vandalism dressed as virtue. Ireland must be a country where enterprise is rewarded, not penalised.

Independent Ireland will oppose any attempt to increase Capital Gains Tax and will instead be bringing forward a series of proposals in the autumn to support intergenerational family business, SME investment, and sustainable rural entrepreneurship. The goal must be a tax system that is not just progressive in theory, but productive in practice.