Pressure to scrap the Universal Social Charge is mounting within Government.

The USC was introduced as a series of temporary taxes in 2011 but has remained in place since then.

People pay the USC if their gross income is more than €13,000 per year.

The Business Post Editor Daniel McConnell told Newstalk Breakfast there is a political appetite to scrap it in the upcoming Budget. 

"Politically there has been a strong push within Fianna Fáil over the last year, particularly since they've taken over the Finance Ministry," he said.

“As the party that introduced it originally, they were very keen to be the party that would get rid of it.

"The Government has spent an awful lot of money giving people back money in recent budgets but they've essentially spread the money too thinly... and people haven't really noticed it.

"Would you not just do one big ticket item, one big bang - particularly in the run up to an election - and abolish the USC?"

'Taxes have increased elsewhere'

Mr McConnell said there are other ways to make up any potential USC shortfall.

"The Government is spending a huge amount of money and has increased its level of spending year-on-year massively," he said.

"Taxes have increased elsewhere and non-direct taxes have increased - there is, I think, further scope to increase non-direct taxation.

"We have income tax there already [the USC] is essentially a second income tax."

'Two income taxes'

Mr McConnell said the tax is "palliatively unfair" to workers.

"The big benefit of the USC is that it did hoover up a lot of the people who had been exempted, through various years and measures by Government, from income tax," he said.

"The argument is there [to] maybe not exempt so many people from income tax in the first place and then you resolve that issue.

"I just think it's palliatively unfair that you would have not one but two income taxes sitting on top of each other," he added.

In a recent poll for The Business Post, 49% of people surveyed said they would prefer to see the USC abolished over 22% who said they'd prefer to see the income tax threshold raised.

The USC took in €5.4bn in 2023, with Finance Minister Jack Chambers describing it as "an important source of revenue to the Exchequer to fund public services."

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