Sewing pockets into shrouds is one part of the campaign to cut inheritance tax. Another is to establish squatter’s rights over the promise of tax cuts, however, negligible in the context of the overall tax take. Talk about cuts is the best bluster to ward off the truth of spendthrift rises in public expenditure. It is a game of bluff, and a game for chancers.

Ghouling the better off is the game for budget day. Self-appointed tribunes of a patrician order that doesn’t exist bewail a 33 per cent tax on inheritances for children on amounts above €335,000 from deceased parents. It cleverly creates an imagined affliction that leaves the mark of the better off on those who bear it. You are oppressed but allowed into the dress circle with a problem that says you have socially arrived. Capital Acquisitions Tax, including inheritance tax, contributed less than 1 per cent of all taxes in 2023. It’s a cheap ticket for so much regard.

At best it is awful nonsense. At worst it attacks a tax base that is already too narrow. Just as our demography is changing, it doubles down on the burden that fewer workers must bear for ever increasing numbers of dependents. It is an injustice only if you forget that we have virtually no tax on either property or wealth in Ireland. Local property charges also contributed less than 1 per cent of all taxes raised last........

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