Ireland's Tax Statistics 2022

The main elements of taxes on Income and Wealth (D51) are Income tax, Corporation tax, Universal Social Charge (USC), and Capital Gains Tax.

As noted earlier, this category has seen very strong growth with €55.8 billion raised in taxes on income, profit, wealth, and capital gains in 2022, a 25% increase on the previous year. This was largely driven by the unprecedented 48% increase in corporation tax. Income tax and Universal Social Charge (USC) also saw strong growth in 2022. Together, corporation tax, income tax, and USC accounted for 49% of all taxes received in the year. 

Examining some of the administrative datasets available, a preliminary analysis is presented in the following tables and figures. Looking at a snapshot of 2021, the most recent detailed data currently available, Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show some additional details of corporation taxes in this period. 

Most corporation tax is paid by a small number of companies. Figure 5.1 shows categories of corporation tax paid and compares the percentage of companies in each category with the percentage of total corporation tax paid. Over 93% of all companies paid less than €100k each in corporation tax in 2021 and this resulted in 6% of the total corporation tax revenue. In the same year less than 1% of companies paid more 85% of the total corporation tax revenue.

A sector breakdown of revenues is shown in Figure 5.2. Almost half of all companies are in the Distribution, Transport, Hotels & Restaurants and Professional, Admin & Support Services categories, conversely more than half of all corporation tax is paid by companies in the Industry (excluding Construction) and Information and Communication sectors.