Councillor Angie Bailey said the current tax system was “very unfair” and urged councillors to support changing the “discriminatory” law.
“People choose not to have kids for many reasons; others don’t get to have kids at all. There’s no reason why you should be treating them differently from those kids,” said Cllr Bailey.
“We need to look at the ideal of what a family is and who decides on the meaning of the family.”
As current capital acquisition laws stand, parents are allowed to give up to €400,000 to their children in gifts and inheritance before they are taxed at 33 per cent, while the threshold before tax for any other close relative is far lower, at €40,000.
For giving inheritance to anyone else, the threshold is only €20,000 before the capital is taxed at 33 per cent.
Cllr Bailey highlighted situations where a niece or a nephew might have a relationship with another family member which resembled that of parent and child. In this case, if anything was given to that family member of substantial value, it would be significantly more taxed.
Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael made several pledges in their election manifestos around inheritance tax. While Fine Gael said it would increase the tax thresholds for everyone, Cllr Bailey wants to go further and end the “discrimination” entirely. She said she had a brother and a sister, both without children, who would face significant taxes through inheritance laws.
“I’m asking that we put pressure on those in power to change what we have currently as this idealistic notion of what the meaning of family is,” she said.
This comes after a recent survey showed the cost of raising a child has increased dramatically in the last decade.
Laya Life’s ‘Cradle to College Cost Index’ survey recently revealed that the total cost to the average family household has climbed to €169,372.85, a 60% increase since 2015.
Money coach Kel Galavan, who has appeared on RTE Radio and 2FM, said the report emphasised how important it was for families to consider financial planning strategies.
A poll by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) in 2023 also found that two-thirds of couples with no children were happy with their financial situation, compared to 58 per cent of couples with kids who said the same.
Of the 1,505 people surveyed in the CCPC report, young adults and lone parents were the most likely to say they were unhappy with their finances.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting scheme