Graphing tax outturn since 1984

I have excluded some minor headings but these are the main ones (actual outturn, thousands of million)

NAMA enforcement properties – mapped

During the week NAMA released this document (thanks NWL) showing the addresses of properties subject to enforcement action. Unfortunately as is often the case with public authorities they released the data in PDF table format, rather than as a spreadsheet. Asking for a KML file probably would have been expecting too much.

With that in mind I converted the PDF back to a spreadsheet, combined the address columns into one column, and then geocoded using the excellent Google Fusion Tables. The result is NOT 100% accurate, I still have to clean up some rows, but generally the information is geographically correct. Here is the result. Click on a red dot to get the associated information.

Continue reading “NAMA enforcement properties – mapped”

Expenses visualisation and spreadsheets

CORRECTION: One of the headings was incorrect. It is travel and subsistence not mobile phones that the most money was spent on. Somehow the headings got shifted across in the totals column. Apologies.

I’ve been messing with Gav’s spreadsheets. Here’s two one quick visualisationish (try saying that one out loud, radio students) thingy. This is TDs only, expenses claimed between 2005 and 2008.

Per category.

The Dáil posse spend a lot on phones, it appears. Wonder if they’ve started billing State for the bills on those unofficial Blackberrys certain TDs have started using. Texts sent or data downloaded from those would not be FOIable, remember. Nice way of circumventing FOI law, that.

Next time you see a Government minister with a second phone, you’ll know the score.

Oh, I’ve got an average figure a TD spent in each category per year. So you can how sort the data per heading and if your TD is above the bolded figure (the average amount spent per year per TD in that category) in any of the few years… well, it may interest you. Please download or copy the file before sorting the data for your own purposes. Each time you sort it, it gets resorted for everyone.

Note: I used the figure of 200 as the number of people who sat in the Dáil on average per year. The election meant one year there were 220 claimants, all the other years there were around 166. 200 is probably too high an average figure but I was feeling generous.

Sheet 2 at this link.

Move sheets by clicking the names across the bottom of the file. Download by clicking File > Download. If you use Gmail, click File > Copy.

Have a good long weekend.

Namaland – A walkabout

Strolled about Dublin’s docklands area and took a few shots, see video below. Archive audio from media appearances between 2005 and 2008. Mostly Bertie Ahern, Sean Fitzpatrick, Michael Fingleton and Sean Fleming TD.

Most of the images are pinned on the Google Map below. Will Panoramio them soon so they’ll be available on Google Earth. Also on Gav’s Flickr account.


View Dublin docklands/quays developments and empty properties in a larger map

Music is Dietro Casa by Ludivico Einaudi.

And yes, you did see that correctly, the Financial Regulator does have an office right beside Irish Nationwide in a building owned by Treasury Holdings, which will be going into NAMA. Oh, what a web.

Anglo losses

Inspired by a visualisation done last year of $1 trillion, I spent a little time playing with Google Sketchup to try and understand just how much money Anglo (ie the public) is expected to lose in its latest fiscal year. So I started with the average male as used in Sketchup (let’s call him Seanie) and drew him next to €1 million in €100 bills, to scale:

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.29.52

Next here’s Seanie next to €10 million:

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.33.34

And now Seanie next to €100 million, on a standard euro sized pallet:

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.35.06

And oh yes, Seanie next to €1 billion, in cool hard cash:

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.36.52

And finally, Seanie next to the lower end projected losses for Anglo: €11 billion:

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.39.45

Nice.

Analysis and visualisation of tax default list 2009

The final quarter of the list of tax defaulters fined or penalised by Revenue during 2009 was published last week. As usual details for name, address and penalties incurred for each defaulter, along with some information on the individual’s occupation, were included. I’ve used that to extrapolate further information and form statistics which can be seen in the graphs below.

Revenue gets our money back into the tax coffers in a number of ways. One is by fining people for, typically small, instances of tax avoidance. That type of case is often for cigarette or alcohol smuggling, failure to lodge income tax returns or the sale, delivery or use of laundered oil. In such circumstances the relevant individuals or companies are usually fined between €250 and €7,000.

In other cases companies make settlements to pay back taxes which, through an audit, Revenue has discovered they owe. These settlements usually involve much larger sums. Almost all of those who make settlements are companies or wealthy self-employed invididuals. Revenue does not publish most settlements of less than €30,000.

To give some idea of the scale between the values of fines and settlements; in Q4 of last year fines totalled €770,000, settlements reached nearly €18million. This was despite there being multiple times the number of cases where fines were made than settlements. It would be an oversimplification (but broadly accurate) to say fines are against the labourer, settlements are made by the developer.

Righty-o, you should now, if you did not have before, have a decent enough understanding of the ways Revenue claws back the few quid. Continue reading “Analysis and visualisation of tax default list 2009”