SUPPORT THE WORK
GetWiki
Ireland as a tax haven
ARTICLE SUBJECTS
being →
database →
ethics →
fiction →
history →
internet →
language →
linux →
logic →
method →
news →
policy →
purpose →
religion →
science →
software →
truth →
unix →
wiki →
ARTICLE TYPES
essay →
feed →
help →
system →
wiki →
ARTICLE ORIGINS
critical →
forked →
imported →
original →
Ireland as a tax haven
please note:
- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
{{short description|Allegation that Ireland facilitates tax base erosion and profit shifting}}{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2015}}{{Use Hiberno-English|date=May 2022}}{{Taxation}}File:OECD Hierarchy of Taxes.png|thumb|upright=1.2|350px|Ireland summarises its taxation policy using the OECDOECDFile:Michael Noonan (crop).jpg|thumb|Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan (2011–2017), told an Irish MEP to "put on the green jersey" when told of a new tax scheme to replace the "Double IrishDouble IrishIreland has been labelled as a tax haven or corporate tax haven in multiple financial reports, an allegation which the state has rejected in response.{{efn|Ireland has also been labelled an "offshore financial centre" (OFC) and also a "Conduit OFC", which tax academics consider to be synomonous with tax havens, however, unlike the tax haven label, Ireland does not raise formal objection to OFC labels}}NEWS,weblink Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadakar: Ireland is not a Tax Haven, Irish Independent, 13 September 2013, Separately, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told attendees [at a U.S. Embassy event in Ireland] that “Ireland is not a tax haven, we do not wish to be a haven, nor do we wish to be seen as oneâ€., Ireland is on all academic "tax haven lists", including the {{slink||Leaders in tax haven research}}, and tax NGOs. Ireland does not meet the 1998 OECD definition of a tax haven, but no OECD member, including Switzerland, ever met this definition; only Trinidad & Tobago met it in 2017. Similarly, no EU–28 country is amongst the 64 listed in the 2017 EU tax haven blacklist and greylist. In September 2016, Brazil became the first G20 country to "blacklist" Ireland as a tax haven.Ireland's base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tools give some foreign corporates {{slink||Effective tax rates}} of 0% to 2.5%{{efn|The 0% rate is from the Double Irish and Single Malt BEPS tools; the Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets (CAIA) (or Green Jersey) BEPS tool has a normal effective rate of 2.5%, but was temporarily reduced to 0% in 2015 for Apple's leprechaun economics restructuring}} on global profits re-routed to Ireland via their tax treaty network.{{efn|name="globalrev"}}{{efn|name="treaty"|In September 2018, Ireland had a global network of 73 bilateral tax treaties, and a 74th with Ghana awaiting ratification.WEB,weblink Revenue: Double Taxation Treaties, Revenue Commissioners, 3 September 2018, }} Ireland's aggregate {{slink||Effective tax rates}} for foreign corporates is 2.2–4.5%. Ireland's BEPS tools are the world's largest BEPS flows, exceed the entire Caribbean system, and artificially inflate the US–EU trade deficit. Ireland's tax-free QIAIF & L–QIAIF regimes, and Section 110 SPVs, enable foreign investors to avoid Irish taxes on Irish assets, and can be combined with Irish BEPS tools to create confidential routes out of the Irish corporate tax system.{{efn|Both the IMF, and the Conduit and Sink OFCs study, show that Luxembourg is by far the most popular destination for capital leaving Ireland; the IMF estimates that over half of the capital leaving Ireland goes to Luxembourg.}} As these structures are OECD–whitelisted, Ireland's laws and regulations allow the use of data protection and data privacy provisions, and opt-outs from filing of public accounts, to obscure their effects. There is arguable evidence that Ireland acts as a {{slink||Captured state}}, fostering tax strategies.Ireland's situation is attributed to {{slink||Political compromises}} arising from the historical U.S. "worldwide" corporate tax system, which has made U.S. multinationals the largest users of tax havens, and BEPS tools, in the world.{{efn|Non–U.S. tax academics have labelled Washington's tolerance of U.S. multinationals using tax havens as an "exorbitant tax privilege", however U.S. tax academics (Hines 2010, Dryeng and Lindsey, 2009.), have shown that U.S. multinational use of tax havens (U.S. multinationals are the largest users of tax havens in the world), has maximised long-term U.S. exchequer, and/or shareholder returns, at the expense of other higher-tax foreign countries (see {{slink||Source of contradictions}})}} The U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("TCJA"), and move to a hybrid "territorial" tax system,{{efn|The TCJA system is described as hybrid, because it still forces minimum U.S. tax rates on foreign income under the TCJA GILTI regime.WEB,weblink A Hybrid Approach: The Treatment of Foreign Profits under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Kyle Pomerleau, 3 May 2018, 15 April 2019, Tax Foundation, While lawmakers generally refer to the new system as a “territorial†tax system, it is more appropriately described as a hybrid system., }} removed the need for some of these compromises. In 2018, IP–heavy S&P500 multinationals guided similar post-TCJA effective tax rates, whether they are legally based in the U.S. (e.g. Pfizer{{efn|name=example2|S&P500 company, Pfizer reported that its 2019 tax rate would be circa 17 per cent, while S&P500 company, Medtronic, an Irish tax inversion, reported a rate of 15–16 per cent.}}), or Ireland (e.g. Medtronic{{efn|name=example2}}). While TCJA neutralised some Irish BEPS tools, it enhanced others (e.g. Apple's "CAIA"{{efn|The Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets (CAIA) Irish BEPS tool, is also known as the #Green Jersey. The U.S. GILTI anti-BEPS regime accepts CAIA's intangible capital allowances as deductible against GILTI tax. Thus, the CAIA's 0–2.5% effective Irish tax rate, under U.S. TCJA participation relief, now also becomes a 0–2.5% effective U.S. tax rate}}). A reliance on U.S. corporates (80% of Irish corporation tax, 25% of Irish labour, 25 of top 50 Irish firms, and 57% of Irish value-add), is a concern in Ireland.{{efn|U.S. corporates also includes U.S. tax inversions to Ireland such as Medtronic, whose effective operations, including executive team and operational headquarters, are all U.S.-based.}}Ireland's weakness in attracting corporates from "territorial" tax systems (Table 1),{{efn|Ireland has no foreign corporates that are non–U.S./non–UK in its top 50 companies by revenue, and only one by employees (German Lidl, which sells into Ireland). The UK multinationals in Ireland are either selling into Ireland (e.g. Tesco), or date from before 2009–2012, after which the UK overhauled its tax system and moved to a "territorial tax" model. Since 2009–12, the UK has become a major tax haven in its own right, competing with Ireland for US tax inversions. Since 2009–12, no UK multinationals have moved to Ireland, and, in 2014, the UK HMRC reported that most prior UK corporate tax inversions to Ireland had returned. The U.S.multinationals in Ireland date from prior to the 2017 TCJA, after which the US moved to a hybrid-"territorial tax" model.}} was apparent in its failure to attract material financial services jobs moving due to Brexit (e.g. no US investment banks or material financial services franchise). Ireland's diversification into full tax haven tools{{efn|These are structures set up to rival and compete for business from traditional tax haven tools such as the Cayman Islands SPC, for which Irish QIAIFs have specific provisions to support transferring SPC assets without tax leakage}} (e.g. QIAIF, L–QIAIF, and ICAV), has seen tax-law firms, and offshore magic circle firms, set up Irish offices to handle Brexit-driven tax restructuring. These tools made Ireland the world's 3rd largest Shadow Banking OFC, and 5th largest Conduit OFC.- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
Context
{{see also|Tax haven#Definitions}}File:Pierre Moscovici - P027634000101-313948.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|right|Pierre Moscovici, EU Tax Commissioner said on the 24 January 2017, the EU did not consider Ireland a tax haven, but on 18 January 2018 said that Ireland was a tax blackhole.]]Ireland has been associated with the term "tax haven" since the U.S. IRS produced a list on the 12 January 1981.{{efn|name="gordon1"|Ireland was listed as a manufacturing tax haven in the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (1981) Tax Haven and Their Use by United States Taxpayers (The Gordon Report). Washington, D.C.: Special Council for International Taxation, Internal Revenue Service}}BOOK,weblink Tax Havens and their use by United States Taxpayers, An Overview, U.S. Internal Revenue Service, 12 January 1981, Ireland has been a consistent feature on almost every non-governmental tax haven list from Hines in February 1994, to Zucman in June 2018 (and each one in-between). However, Ireland has never been considered a tax haven by either the OECD or the EU Commission. These two contrasting facts are used by various sides, to allegedly prove or disprove that Ireland is a tax haven, and much of the detail in-between is discarded, some of which can explain the EU and OCED's position. Confusing scenarios have emerged, for example:- In April 2000, the FSF–IMF listed Ireland as an offshore financial centre ("OFC"), based on criteria which academics and the OECD support. The Irish State has never refuted the OFC label, and there are Irish State documents that note Ireland as an OFC. Yet, the terms OFC and "tax haven" are often considered synonymous.
- In December 2017, the EU did not consider Ireland to be a tax haven, and Ireland is not in the {{slink||EU 2017 tax haven lists}}; in January 2017 the EU Commissioner for Taxation, Pierre Moscovici, stated this publicly. However, the same Commissioner in January 2018, described Ireland to the EU Parliament as a tax black hole.
- In September 2018, the 29th Chair of the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisors, tax-expert Kevin Hassett, said that: "It’s not Ireland’s fault U.S. tax law was written by someone on acid". Hassett, however, had labelled Ireland as a tax haven in November 2017, when advocating for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("TCJA").NEWS,weblink 'It's not Ireland's fault U.S. tax law was written by someone on acid', 13 September 2018, Irish Independent, The economist [Kevin Hassett], who has previously referred to the Republic as a tax haven, said there had been a need to introduce reforms in the US, which have brought its corporate rate down to 21 per cent.,
Labels{{anchor|Source of labels}}
{{see also|Tax haven#Tax haven lists|Corporate haven#Corporate tax haven lists}}Ireland has been labelled a tax haven, or a corporate tax haven (or Conduit OFC), by:{{ordered list| The main {{slink | Leaders in tax haven research}}:HTTPS://EC.EUROPA.EU/INFO/SITES/INFO/FILES/DP_055_EN.PDF>TITLE=BANKS IN TAX HAVENS: FIRST EVIDENCE BASED ON COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY REPORTING | AUTHOR1=VINCENT BOUVATIER | AUTHOR3=ANNE-LAURE DELATTE | PUBLISHER=EU COMMISSION | James R. Hines Jr. (1994, 2007, 2010),HTTP://TAXDOCTORALSEMINAR.WEB.UNC.EDU/FILES/2016/02/HINES-RICE.PDF | AUTHOR1=JAMES R. HINES JR. | QUOTE=WE IDENTIFY 41 COUNTRIES AND REGIONS AS TAX HAVENS FOR THE PURPOSES OF U. S. BUSINESSES. TOGETHER THE SEVEN TAX HAVENS WITH POPULATIONS GREATER THAN ONE MILLION (HONG KONG, IRELAND, LIBERIA, LEBANON, PANAMA, SINGAPORE, AND SWITZERLAND) ACCOUNT FOR 80 PERCENT OF TOTAL TAX HAVEN POPULATION AND 89 PERCENT OF TAX HAVEN GDP. | DATE=FEBRUARY 1994 | ISSUE=1 | ACCESS-DATE=23 JUNE 2018 | ARCHIVE-DATE=25 AUGUST 2017 | QUOTE=THERE ARE ROUGHLY 45 MAJOR TAX HAVENS IN THE WORLD TODAY. EXAMPLES INCLUDE ANDORRA, IRELAND, LUXEMBOURG AND MONACO IN EUROPE, HONG KONG AND SINGAPORE IN ASIA, AND THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, THE NETHERLANDS ANTILLES, AND PANAMA IN THE AMERICAS. | PUBLISHER=THE NEW PALGRAVE DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS | AUTHOR-LINK=JAMES R. HINES JR, HTTPS://REPOSITORY.LAW.UMICH.EDU/CGI/VIEWCONTENT.CGI?REFERER=HTTPS://WWW.GOOGLE.IE/&HTTPSREDIR=1&ARTICLE=1716&CONTEXT=ARTICLES>TITLE=TREASURE ISLANDS | AUTHOR=JAMES R. HINES JR. | JOURNAL=JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE=24 | AUTHOR-LINK=JAMES R. HINES JR, Dhammika Dharmapala (2008 and 2009),HTTPS://ACADEMIC.OUP.COM/OXREP/ARTICLE/24/4/661/547359#>TITLE=WHAT PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES ARE CREATED BY TAX HAVENS? | JOURNAL=OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY | DATE=DECEMBER 2008 | ISSUE=4, Table 1: List of Tax Havens | AUTHOR2=JAMES R. HINES JR. | VOLUME=93 | URL=HTTP://FACULTY.SMU.EDU/MILLIMET/CLASSES/ECO6375/PAPERS/DHARMAPALA%20HINES.PDF | JOURNAL=JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS | QUOTE=PAGE 1067: LIST OF TAX HAVENS | S2CID=16653726 | Gabriel Zucman (2013, 2014 and 2018);HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/IRELAND-IS-THE-WORLD-S-BIGGEST-CORPORATE-TAX-HAVEN-SAY-ACADEMICS-1.3528401?MODE=SAMPLE&AUTH-FAILED=1&PW-ORIGIN=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FWWW.IRISHTIMES.COM%2FBUSINESS%2FECONOMY%2FIRELAND-IS-THE-WORLD-S-BIGGEST-CORPORATE-TAX-HAVEN-SAY-ACADEMICS-1.3528401 | QUOTE=NEW GABRIEL ZUCMAN STUDY CLAIMS STATE SHELTERS MORE MULTINATIONAL PROFITS THAN THE ENTIRE CARIBBEAN | IRISH TIMES>DATE=13 JUNE 2018 | ACCESS-DATE=29 APRIL 2019, HTTP://GABRIEL-ZUCMAN.EU/MISSINGPROFITS/>TITLE=THE MISSING PROFITS OF NATIONS | PAGE=31 | AUTHOR2=THOMAS TORSLOV | PUBLISHER=NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, WORKING PAPERS | AUTHOR1-LINK=GABRIEL ZUCMAN, HTTPS://EML.BERKELEY.EDU/~SAEZ/COURSE/ZUCMAN11.PDF>AUTHOR=GABRIEL ZUCMAN | JOURNAL=THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS | ISSUE=3 | DATE=AUGUST 2013 | DOI=10.1093/QJE/QJT012 | AUTHOR-LINK=GABRIEL ZUCMAN, GABRIEL ZUCMAN >TITLE=TAXING ACROSS BORDERS: TRACKING PERSONAL WEALTH AND CORPORATE PROFITS | JOURNAL=JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE=4 | DATE=AUGUST 2014 | DOI=10.1257/JEP.28.4.121 | DOI-ACCESS=FREE, HTTPS://WWW.WSJ.COM/ARTICLES/CORPORATIONS-PUSH-PROFITS-INTO-TAX-HAVENS-AS-COUNTRIES-STRUGGLE-IN-PURSUIT-STUDY-SAYS-1528634659>TITLE=ZUCMAN:CORPORATIONS PUSH PROFITS INTO CORPORATE TAX HAVENS AS COUNTRIES STRUGGLE IN PURSUIT, GABRIAL ZUCMAN STUDY SAYS | NEWSPAPER=WALL STREET JOURNAL | ACCESS-DATE=29 APRIL 2019 | Other important {{slink | Leaders in tax haven research}}: Joel Slemrod (2006),HTTP://GABRIEL-ZUCMAN.EU/FILES/TEACHING/SLEMRODWILSON09.PDF>TITLE=TAX COMPETITION WITH PARASITIC TAX HAVENS | JOURNAL=JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS | AUTHOR2=JOHN D. WILSON | Mihir A. Desai (2006);MIHIR A. DESAI | AUTHOR3-LINK=JAMES R. HINES JR | TITLE=THE DEMAND FOR TAX HAVEN OPERATIONS | JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS > VOLUME=90 | PAGES=513–531 | QUOTE=EXAMPLES OF SUCH TAX HAVENS INCLUDE IRELAND AND LUXEMBOURG IN EUROPE, HONG KONG AND SINGAPORE IN ASIA, AND VARIOUS CARIBBEAN ISLAND NATIONS IN THE AMERICAS. | AUTHOR1-LINK=MIHIR A. DESAI, | Conduit and Sink OFCs)JAVIER GARCIA-BERNARDO | AUTHOR3=FRANK W. TAKES | VOLUME=7 | PAGES=6246 | JOURNAL=SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | BIBCODE=2017NATSR...7.6246G | DOI=10.1038/S41598-017-06322-9 | PMC=5524793, HTTPS://WWW.RTE.IE/EILE/BRAINSTORM/2017/0725/892887-THESE-COUNTRIES-ARE-CONDUITS-FOR-THE-WORLDS-BIGGEST-TAX-HAVENS/>TITLE=THE COUNTRIES WHICH ARE CONDUITS FOR THE BIGGEST TAX HAVENS (IRELAND IS 5TH) | RTÉ NEWS>QUOTE=A NEW UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM CORPNET STUDY HAS FOUND THAT THE NETHERLANDS, THE UK, SWITZERLAND, SINGAPORE AND IRELAND ARE THE LEADING INTERMEDIARY COUNTRIES THAT CORPORATIONS USE TO FUNNEL THEIR MONEY TO AND FROM TAX HAVENS | ACCESS-DATE=29 APRIL 2019, and by the International Monetary Fund journal in 2018;HTTP://WWW.IMF.ORG/EXTERNAL/PUBS/FT/FANDD/2018/06/INSIDE-THE-WORLD-OF-GLOBAL-TAX-HAVENS-AND-OFFSHORE-BANKING/DAMGAARD.HTM>TITLE=PIERCING THE VEIL OF TAX HAVENS | AUTHOR2=THOMAS ELKJAER | JOURNAL=INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY | VOLUME=55 | DATE=JUNE 2018, | PUBLISHER=GERMAN INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH, DIW BERLIN | AUTHOR2=JAKOB MIETHE | QUOTE=TABLE A1: TAX HAVENS FULL LIST:IRELAND | PUBLISHER=CITY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON | AUTHOR=RONEN PALAN | DATE=JUNE 2013 | ACCESS-DATE=23 JUNE 2018 | ARCHIVE-URL=HTTPS://WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG/WEB/20151003212438/HTTP://WWW.CITY.AC.UK/__DATA/ASSETS/PDF_FILE/0005/163328/CITYPERC-WPS-2013_03.PDF | United Nations University>United Nations,HTTPS://WWW.WIDER.UNU.EDU/SITES/DEFAULT/FILES/EVENTS/PDF/PAPERS/PUBECONCONF2017-PALANSKY.PDF>AUTHOR1=PETR JANSKY | TITLE=ESTIMATING THE SCALE OF CORPORATE PROFIT SHIFTING: TAX REVENUE LOSSES RELATED TO FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT | UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY>PAGE=5 | DATE=MAY 2017, and Ireland itself; | Institute on Taxation and Economic PolicyHTTPS://ITEP.ORG/WP-CONTENT/UPLOADS/OFFSHORESHELLGAMES2017.PDF | PAGE=17 | DATE=2017, HTTPS://FORA.IE/TAX-HAVEN-IRELAND-US-OVERSEAS-3023020-OCT2016/>PUBLISHER=FORA, SUNDAY BUSINESS POST | QUOTE=THE STUDY PROVIDED FIGURES FOR THE COMBINED PROFITS REPORTED BY AMERICAN MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN '10 NOTORIOUS TAX HAVENS' – A LIST THAT INCLUDED IRELAND, THE NETHERLANDS AND SWITZERLAND | Oxfam.HTTP://WWW.THEJOURNAL.IE/OXFAM-TAX-HAVEN-3133714-DEC2016/ | PUBLISHER=JOURNAL.IE | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | The two U.S. Congressional investigations into global tax havens: 2008 by the Government Accountability Office,HTTPS://WWW.GAO.GOV/ASSETS/290/284522.PDF>TITLE=INTERNATIONAL TAXATION: LARGE U.S. CORPORATIONS AND FEDERAL CONTRACTORS WITH SUBSIDIARIES IN JURISDICTIONS LISTED AS TAX HAVENS OR FINANCIAL PRIVACY JURISDICTIONS | QUOTE=TABLE 1: JURISDICTIONS LISTED AS TAX HAVENS OR FINANCIAL PRIVACY JURISDICTIONS AND THE SOURCES OF THOSE JURISDICTIONS | DATE=18 DECEMBER 2008, and 2015 by the Congressional Research Service.HTTPS://DIGITALCOMMONS.ILR.CORNELL.EDU/CGI/VIEWCONTENT.CGI?ARTICLE=2387&CONTEXT=KEY_WORKPLACE>TITLE=TAX HAVENS: INTERNATIONAL TAX AVOIDANCE AND EVASION | FIRST=JANE | PAGE=4 | DATE=15 JANUARY 2015, | United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations>U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation ("PSI") into tax avoidance activities of U.S. multinationals by using "profit shifting" BEPS tools;HTTPS://WWW.SCRIBD.COM/DOCUMENT/142660268/SUBCOMMITTEE-MEMO-ON-OFFSHORE-PROFIT-SHIFTING-APPLE>TITLE=OFFSHORE PROFIT SHIFTING AND THE U.S. TAX CODE – PART 2 (APPLE INC.) | AUTHOR2=SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN | QUOTE=A NUMBER OF STUDIES SHOW THAT MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS ARE MOVING "MOBILE" INCOME OUT OF THE UNITED STATES INTO LOW OR NO TAX JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING TAX HAVENS SUCH AS IRELAND, BERMUDA, AND THE CAYMAN ISLANDS. | DATE=21 MAY 2013, HTTP://WWW.THEJOURNAL.IE/IRELAND-AMBASSADOR-LETTER-US-SENATE-CORPORATE-TAX-932838-MAY2013/>TITLE=SENATORS INSISTS IRELAND IS A TAX HAVEN, DESPITE AMBASSADOR'S LETTER: CARL LEVIN AND JOHN MCCAIN HAVE DISMISSED THE IRISH AMBASSADOR'S ACCOUNT OF IRELAND'S CORPORATE TAX SYSTEM. | QUOTE=SENATORS LEVIN AND MCCAIN: MOST REASONABLE PEOPLE WOULD AGREE THAT NEGOTIATING SPECIAL TAX ARRANGEMENTS THAT ALLOW COMPANIES TO PAY LITTLE OR NO INCOME TAX MEETS A COMMON-SENSE DEFINITION OF A TAX HAVEN. | NEWSPAPER=REUTERS | The books on tax havens in the last decade, with at least 300 citations on Google Scholar: Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works, by Ronen Palan and Richard Murphy (tax campaigner) | from 2010, (Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World), by Nicholas Shaxson from 2011, and (The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens), by Gabriel Zucman from 2015;>The main financial media: New York Times,TAX HAVENS BLUNT IMPACT OF CORPORATE TAX CUT, ECONOMISTS SAY > AUTHOR=JIM TANKERSLEY | NEWSPAPER=NEW YORK TIMES | DATE=10 JUNE 2018 | Bloomberg News,HTTPS://WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM/VIEW/ARTICLES/2014-02-11/WEIL-ON-FINANCE-YES-IRELAND-IS-A-TAX-HAVEN | PUBLISHER=BLOOMBERG NEWS | AUTHOR=JONATHAN WEIL | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019, the Wall Street Journal,HTTPS://WWW.WSJ.COM/ARTICLES/DUBLIN-MOVES-TO-BLOCK-CONTROVERSIAL-TAX-GAMBIT-1381890312> TITLE=DUBLIN MOVES TO BLOCK CONTROVERSIAL TAX GAMBIT | MATHESON (LAW FIRM)>MATHESON, AN IRISH LAW FIRM THAT SPECIALIZES IN WAYS COMPANIES CAN USE IRISH TAX LAW. | WALL STREET JOURNAL>DATE=15 OCTOBER 2013 | AUTHOR1=DAMIAN PALETTA | Forbes,HTTPS://WWW.FORBES.COM/SITES/TAXANALYSTS/2013/11/06/IF-IRELAND-IS-NOT-A-TAX-HAVEN-WHAT-IS-IT/#79FF76D37746 | AUTHOR=MARTIN SULLIVAN (FORBES TAX GROUP) | FORBES>DATE=NOVEMBER 2014 | Financial Times,HTTPS://WWW.FT.COM/CONTENT/D9B4FD34-CA3F-11E3-8A31-00144FEABDC0 | QUOTE=THAT UNDERMINES IRELAND'S INSISTENCE THAT IT IS NOT A TAX HAVEN, MAKING IT MORE DIFFICULT TO DEFEND ITS SYSTEM IN AN INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE THAT IS TURNING SHARPLY AGAINST TAX AVOIDANCE. | FINANCIAL TIMES>DATE=29 APRIL 2014 | AUTHOR1=VANESSA HOULDER | AUTHOR3=JAMES POLITI, The Economist,HTTPS://WWW.ECONOMIST.COM/BUSINESS/2015/10/08/STILL-SLIPPING-THE-NET>TITLE=STILL SLIPPING THE NET EUROPE'S CORPORATE-TAX HAVENS SAY THEY ARE REFORMING. UP TO A POINT | THE ECONOMIST> QUOTE= THE NETHERLANDS, AND OTHER LOW-TAX HAVENS SUCH AS IRELAND AND LUXEMBOURG, HAVE ATTRACTED MUCH CRITICISM FROM OTHER COUNTRIES FOR THE LEGAL LOOPHOLES THEY LEAVE OPEN TO ENCOURAGE SUCH TAX AVOIDANCE BY BIG CORPORATIONS. | AUTHOR=ECONOMIST EDITORIAL | Washington Post,HTTPS://WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POLITICS/2019/04/25/IRELAND-IS-TAX-HAVEN-THATS-BECOMING-CONTROVERSIAL-HOME/?NOREDIRECT=ON | AUTHOR=AIDAN REGAN | WASHINGTON POST>DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | Fortune (magazine)>Fortune;HTTP://FORTUNE.COM/2016/07/13/IRELAND-TAX-HAVEN-GDP-UP/>TITLE=THIS TAX HAVEN JUST REVISED ITS 2015 GDP UP FROM 7.8% TO 26.3% | FORTUNE (MAGAZINE)>FORTUNE | DATE=14 JULY 2016 | Some leading economists;HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/JOSEPH-STIGLITZ-CHEATING-IRELAND-MUDDLED-EUROPE-1.2776981?MODE=SAMPLE&AUTH-FAILED=1&PW-ORIGIN=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FWWW.IRISHTIMES.COM%2FBUSINESS%2FECONOMY%2FJOSEPH-STIGLITZ-CHEATING-IRELAND-MUDDLED-EUROPE-1.2776981>AUTHOR=JOSEPH STIGLITZ | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | TITLE=ONE LAST TIME ON WHO BENEFITS FROM CORPORATE TAX CUTS | THE WASHINGTON POST > QUOTE=THESE EXAMPLES FEEL FAR MORE RELEVANT TO THE CORPORATE TAX ISSUE ANALYSIS THAN COMPARISONS TO SMALL ECONOMIES AND TAX HAVENS LIKE IRELAND AND SWITZERLAND UPON WHICH THE CEA RELIES | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | TITLE=THE DESPERATE INEQUALITY BEHIND GLOBAL TAX DODGING | THE GUARDIAN>QUOTE=OUR RESEARCH SHOWS THAT SIX EUROPEAN TAX HAVENS ALONE (LUXEMBOURG, IRELAND, THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, MALTA AND CYPRUS) SIPHON OFF A TOTAL OF €350BN EVERY YEAR | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | QUOTE=IRELAND'S CORPORATE TAX RATE HAS COME UNDER HEAVY CRITICISM AT THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IN DAVOS, SWITZERLAND. | THEJOURNAL.IE > DATE=28 JANUARY 2018 | AUTHOR=GRáINNE Nà AODHA, HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/YANIS-VAROUFAKIS-IRELAND-A-TAX-HAVEN-FREE-RIDING-ON-EUROPE-1.3527092>AUTHOR=YANIS VAROUFAKIS | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | G20 economy, Brazil, who blacklisted Ireland in September 2016;HTTPS://WWW.REUTERS.COM/ARTICLE/IRELAND-BRAZIL-FUNDS/BLACKLISTED-BY-BRAZIL-DUBLIN-FUNDS-FIND-NEW-WAYS-TO-INVEST-IDUSL8N1MK2NX>TITLE=BLACKLISTED BY BRAZIL, DUBLIN FUNDS FIND NEW WAYS TO INVEST | REUTERS>DATE=20 MARCH 2017 | QUOTE=* IRELAND JOINED PANAMA AND MONACO ON BRAZIL BLACKLIST. | PUBLISHER=TAX JUSTICE NETWORK | NEWSPAPER=IRISH INDEPENDENT | The European Parliament in March 2019 voted to accept a report by 505 votes in favour to 63 against, recommending Ireland, as one several "EU tax havens", be included on the official EU Commission list of tax havens.{{efn | European Parliament vote is not binding on the EU Commission to formally include these "EU tax havens" in the official EU list of tax havens (blacklist or greylist); to be binding, it must be a unanimous vote by all member states.HTTPS://WWW.DUTCHNEWS.NL/NEWS/2019/03/THE-NETHERLANDS-IS-A-TAX-HAVEN-ALONGSIDE-IRELAND-MALTA-AND-CYPRUS-SAY-MEPS/ | DATE=27 MARCH 2019 | QUOTE=MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT HAVE VOTED TO INCLUDE THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, LUXEMBOURG, MALTA AND CYPRUS ON THE OFFICIAL EU TAX HAVEN BLACK LIST. | AUTHOR=CLIFF TAYLOR | IRISH TIMES>DATE=28 MARCH 2019 | QUOTE=THE REPUBLIC HELPS BIG MULTINATIONALS TO ENGAGE IN AGGRESSIVE TAX PLANNING AND THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION SHOULD REGARD IT AS ONE OF FIVE “EU TAX HAVENS†UNTIL SUBSTANTIAL TAX REFORMS ARE IMPLEMENTED., HTTPS://WWW.RTE.IE/NEWS/BUSINESS/2019/0326/1038812-IRELAND-EUROPEAN-REPORT/>TITLE=IRELAND LIKENED TO TAX HAVEN IN REPORT ACCEPTED IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT | RTÉ NEWS>AUTHOR=COLM Ó MONGáIN | ACCESS-DATE=20 APRIL 2019, HTTPS://WWW.ICIJ.ORG/INVESTIGATIONS/LUXEMBOURG-LEAKS/SEVEN-EU-COUNTRIES-LABELED-TAX-HAVENS-IN-PARLIAMENT-REPORT/ > TITLE=SEVEN EU COUNTRIES LABELED 'TAX HAVENS' IN PARLIAMENT REPORT | INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS > AUTHOR=SIMON BOWERS | ACCESS-DATE=20 APRIL 2019, }}Ireland has also been labelled related terms to being a tax haven:{{ordered list|type=lower-roman | tax dumping has been used against Ireland by German political leaders;HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/GERMAN-IRISH-RELATIONSHIP-FACES-STRESS-OVER-TAX-AVOIDANCE-MEASURES-1.3353516 | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | DATE=13 JANUARY 2018, HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/GERMAN-PARTY-REJECTS-IRISH-LOAN-REPAYMENT-PLAN-THAT-COULD-SAVE-150M-1.3294898>QUOTE="WE WON'T GO ALONG WITH THIS FREE PASS FOR IRELAND BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT ONGOING TAX DUMPING IN THE EU. WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IRELAND'S 12.5 PER CENT TAX RATE HERE, BUT SECRET DEALS THAT REDUCE THAT TAX BURDEN TO NEAR ZERO." | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES, 17 November 2017, | Financial Stability Forum ("FSF") and the International Monetary Fund ("IMF") listed Ireland as an offshore financial centre in June 2000;HTTP://WWW.ACADEMIC-FORESIGHTS.COM/TAX_HAVENS.PDF | TITLE=TAX HAVENS AND OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTRES | AUTHOR=RONEN PALAN | AUTHOR-LINK=RONEN PALAN | ARCHIVE-DATE=12 APRIL 2018 | URL-STATUS=DEAD, HTTP://WWW.CORNELLPRESS.CORNELL.EDU/BOOK/?GCOI=80140100541250>PAGE=24 | TITLE=TAX HAVENS AND OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTRES | AUTHOR=RONEN PALAN | DATE=2010 | SERIES=CORNELL STUDIES IN MONEY | AUTHOR-LINK=RONEN PALAN, | Feargal O'Rourke, used the term tax avoidance hub;HTTPS://WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM/NEWS/ARTICLES/2013-10-28/MAN-MAKING-IRELAND-TAX-AVOIDANCE-HUB-GLOBALLY-PROVES-LOCAL-HERO | NEWSPAPER=BLOOMBERG.COM | QUOTE=GOOGLE INC., FACEBOOK INC. AND LINKEDIN CORP. WOUND UP IN IRELAND BECAUSE THEY COULD REDUCE THEIR TAX BILLS. THEIR SUCCESS IS LEADING EUROPEAN AND U.S. POLITICIANS TO LABEL THE COUNTRY A TAX HAVEN THAT MUST CHANGE ITS WAYS, 28 October 2013, | holy grail of tax avoidance;HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/THE-HOLY-GRAIL-OF-TAX-AVOIDANCE-SCHEMES-WAS-MADE-IN-THE-US-1.1878617 | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | PUBLISHER=JOURNAL.IE, 23 May 2013, | OECD has never listed any of its 35 members as tax havens, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland are called OECD tax havens;HTTPS://FRANCISWEYZIG.FILES.WORDPRESS.COM/2013/05/WEYZIG-TAX-TREATY-SHOPPING-20120810.PDF | QUOTE=THE FOUR OECD MEMBER COUNTRIES LUXEMBOURG, IRELAND, BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND, WHICH CAN ALSO BE REGARDED AS TAX HAVENS FOR MULTINATIONALS BECAUSE OF THEIR SPECIAL TAX REGIMES. | LAST=WEYZIG | DATE=2013 | ISSUE=6 | DOI=10.1007/S10797-012-9250-Z, 45082557, | EU Commission has never formally listed any of its 28 members as tax havens, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium are called EU tax havens.HTTPS://FRANCISWEYZIG.COM/2017/10/25/THE-NASTY-FOUR-MUST-SHOW-THEIR-REAL-COLOURS/ | PUBLISHER=INTERNATIONAL TAX AND PUBLIC FINANCE | FIRST=FRANCIS | NEWSPAPER=IRISH INDEPENDENT | ACCESS-DATE=25 APRIL 2019 | QUOTE=POLISH PRIME MINISTER MATEUSZ MORAWIECKI MADE AN EMOTIVE PLEA FOR REFORM – SAYING EU TAX HAVENS SHOULD BE ABOLISHED IN A THINLY VEILED SWIPE AT IRELAND., }}The term tax haven has been used by the Irish mainstream media and leading Irish commentators.NEWS,weblink Diarmuid Ferriter, Irish Times, Semantics and Ireland's tax status Department of Finance persists in denying Ireland is world's biggest tax haven, 16 June 2018, Despite such developments, "Team Ireland" has constantly dismissed the description of Ireland as a tax haven, even when the extent of that haven is patently obvious., Diarmuid Ferriter, NEWS,weblink There is a broad consensus that Ireland must defend its 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate. But that rate is defensible only if it is real. The great risk to Ireland is that we are trying to defend the indefensible. It is morally, politically and economically wrong for Ireland to allow vastly wealthy corporations to escape the basic duty of paying tax. If we don't recognise that now, we will soon find that a key plank of Irish policy has become untenable., EDITORIAL: Corporate tax: defending the indefensible, 2 December 2017, Irish Times, Times Editorial, NEWS, The United States' new view of Ireland: 'tax haven',weblink John Holden, Irish Times, January 2017, 25 April 2019, NEWS,weblink Fintan O'Toole, US taxpayers growing tired of Ireland's one big idea, Irish Times, 16 April 2016, 25 April 2019, Fintan O'Toole, NEWS,weblink Is Ireland a one-trick pony by enticing corporations with low taxes?: Cillian Doyle says Ireland is a tax haven and we should change our ways before the decisions are taken out of our hands, And as the UN's Philip Aston says, 'when lists of tax havens are drawn up, Ireland is always prominently among them'. The U.S. Senate similarly found that by any 'common sense definition of a tax haven' Ireland easily met the criteria. I mean when Forbes regularly ranks you in their list of 'Top ten tax havens', there's not really much of a debate to be had., TheJournal.ie, Cillian Doyle, 21 January 2016, 25 April 2019, Irish elected TDs have asked the question: "Is Ireland a tax haven?".WEB,weblink Is Ireland a tax haven for corporations?, Clare Daly TD, 29 May 2013, 26 June 2018, 14 May 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180514064828weblink">weblink dead, WEB,weblink Is Ireland a tax haven?, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, August 2013, 26 June 2018, 26 June 2018,weblink dead, A search of Dáil Éireann debates lists 871 references to the term.WEB,weblink Dail Eireann Oireachtas Debates: Search, 20 December 2018, Some established Irish political parties accuse the Irish State of tax haven activities.WEB,weblink SINN FEIN: MEP McCarthy criticises EU tax haven blacklist as a whitewash, 6 December 2017, Sinn Féin, 26 June 2018, 26 June 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180626135654weblink">weblink dead, WEB,weblink SINN FEIN: Irish state's tax haven activities contribute to obscene inequality, 18 October 2017, Sinn Féin, 26 June 2018, 26 June 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180626135837weblink">weblink dead, NEWS,weblink LABOUR PARTY: Time to 'definitively address' Ireland's tax haven reputation: Joan Burton drafts Bill to establish tax commission to rehabilitate State's 'last chance saloon' on tax justice, 3 July 2018, Irish Times, {{blockquote|The international community at this point is concerned about the nature of tax havens, and Ireland in particular is viewed with a considerable amount of suspicion in the international community for doing what is considered – at the very least – on the boundaries of acceptable practices.|author=Ashoka Mody, Ex-IMF mission chief to Ireland, "Former IMF official warns Ireland to prepare for end to tax regime", 21 June 2018.WEB,weblink "The golden goose may be killed" – Former IMF official warns Ireland to prepare for end to tax regime, 21 June 2018, Newstalk, }}OECD plansWhile Ireland has been considered a tax haven by many for decades, the global tax system that Ireland depends on to incentivize multinational corporations to move there is receiving an overhaul by a coalition of 130 nations. This would cause changes to Ireland's official corporate tax rate of 12.5%, and the associated rules sometimes described as helping companies based there avoid paying taxes to other countries where they make profits.NEWS,weblink Ireland's Days as a Tax Haven May be Ending, but Not Without a Fight, The New York Times, 8 July 2021, Alderman, Liz, Originally Ireland was one of the few countries (one of nine) to oppose signing up for reform to a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and to force technology and retail companies to pay taxes based on where their goods and services were sold, rather than where the company was located. The Irish government would eventually agree to the terms of the deal after some debate. As of October 7, 2021 Ireland dropped its opposition to an overhaul of global corporate tax rules giving up its 12.5% tax rate.NEWS,weblink Ireland agrees to global tax deal, sacrificing prized low rate, Reuters, 7 October 2021, Halpin, Padraic, Humphries, Conor, The Irish Cabinet approved an increase from 12.5% to 15% in corporation tax for companies with turnover in excess of 750 million euros.WEB,weblink Global tax deal inches closer as holdout Ireland agrees to sign up, CNBC, 7 October 2021, Additionally, the Irish Department of Finance has estimated that joining this global deal would reduce the country's tax take by 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) a year, according to RTE. The other countries party to this deal did have to agree to compromise on a few key issues involved in the reform, dropping the “at least†in the statement “minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%†updating it to just 15% — signaling that the rate would not be pushed up at a later date. Ireland was also given assurances that it could keep the lower rate for smaller firms located in the country.Evidence{{anchor|Evidence used}}Global U.S. BEPS hub{{see also|Corporation tax in the Republic of Ireland#Low tax economy}}File:EUROSTAT Ireland Gross Operating Surplus by Controlling Country, €million 2015.png|thumb|upright=1.0|Dominance of U.S. companies: Irish corporate Gross Operating Surplus (i.e. profits), by the controlling country of the company (note: a material part of the Irish figure is also from U.S. tax inversions who are U.S.–controlled). Eurostat (2015).WEB,weblink Who shifts profits to Ireland, Economic Incentives, University College CorkUniversity College CorkIreland ranks in all non-political "tax haven lists" going back to the first lists in 1994,{{efn|name="gordon1"}} and features in all "proxy tests" for tax havens and "quantitative measures" of tax havens. The level of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by U.S. multinationals in Ireland is so large, that in 2017 the Central Bank of Ireland abandoned GDP/GNP as a statistic to replace it with Modified gross national income (GNI*).NEWS,weblink CSO paints a very different picture of Irish economy with new measure, Irish Times, 15 July 2017, NEWS,weblink New economic Leprechaun on loose as rate of growth plunges, Irish Independent, 15 July 2017, Economists note that Ireland's distorted GDP is now distorting the EU's aggregate GDP,WEB,weblink Ireland has, more or less, stopped using GDP to measure its own economy. And on current trends [because Irish GDP is distorting EU–28 aggregate data], the eurozone taken as a whole may need to consider something similar., Ireland Exports its Leprechaun, Council on Foreign Relations, 11 May 2018, Brad Setser, 29 April 2019, Brad Setser, and has artificially inflated the trade-deficit between the EU and the US.WEB,weblink The Missing Profits of Nations, Profit shifting also has a significant effect on trade balances. For instance, after accounting for profit shifting, Japan, the UK, France, and Greece turn out to have trade surpluses in 2015, in contrast to the published data that record trade deficits. According to our estimates, the true trade deficit of the United States was 2.1% of GDP in 2015, instead of 2.8% in the official statistics—that is, a quarter of the recorded trade deficit of the United States is an illusion of multinational corporate tax avoidance., Gabriel Zucman, Thomas Tørsløv, Ludvig Wier, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Papers, 25, 8 June 2018, 29 April 2019, Gabriel Zucman, (see Table 1).Ireland's IP–based BEPS tools use "intellectual property" ("IP") to "shift profits" from higher-tax locations, with whom Ireland has bilateral tax treaties, back to Ireland.{{efn|name="treaty"}} Once in Ireland, these tools reduce Irish corporate taxes by re-routing to say Bermuda with the Double Irish BEPS tool (e.g. as Google and Facebook did), or to Malta with the Single Malt BEPS tool (e.g. as Microsoft and Allergan did), or by writing-off internally created virtual assets against Irish corporate tax with the Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets ("CAIA") BEPS tool (e.g. as Apple did post 2015). These BEPS tools give an Irish corporate effective tax rate (ETR) of 0–2.5%. They are the world's largest BEPS tools, and exceed the aggregate flows of the Caribbean tax system.NEWS,weblink Ireland named as world's biggest tax haven, The Times, 14 June 2018, Research conducted by academics at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Copenhagen estimated that foreign multinationals moved €90 billion of profits to Ireland in 2015 — more than all Caribbean countries combined., 29 April 2019, Reporter, Peter O'Dwyer, NEWS,weblink Ireland is becoming the tax haven of choice for profit-shifting multinationals, Irish Times, 16 June 2018, 10 March 2019, Fintan O'Toole, Fintan O'Toole, File:Ireland Trade Good Discrepancy (1995-2017).png|thumb|Apple's Q1 2015 Irish restructuring, is the largest BEPS action in history, and led to the replacement of GDP by GNI*.Setser & Frank (CoFR),WEB,weblink Tax Avoidance and the Irish Balance of Payments, Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsIreland has received the most U.S. corporate tax inversions of any global jurisdiction, or tax haven, since the first U.S. tax inversion in 1983.WEB,weblink Tracking Tax Runaways, Bloomberg News, 1 March 2017, 29 April 2019, Zachary Mider, While IP–based BEPS tools are the majority of Irish BEPS flows, they were developed from Ireland's traditional expertise in inter-group contract manufacturing, or transfer pricing–based (TP) BEPS tools (e.g. capital allowance schemes, inter-group cross-border charging), which still provide material employment in Ireland (e.g. from U.S. life sciences firmsNEWS, Tax deals raise questions over Ireland's growth spurt,weblink Financial Times, Vincent Boland, 9 December 2014, 29 April 2019, Economists suggest offshore activity has given misleading picture of health., ).WEB,weblink Irish overseas 'contract manufacturing' mainly tax avoidance, FinFacts Ireland, Michael Halligan, 16 February 2015, 29 April 2019, WEB, The Growth Effect of 'Contract Manufacturing',weblink Seamus Coffey, Seamus Coffey, Economic Incentives, 19 March 2015, 29 April 2019, Some corporates like Apple maintain expensive Irish contract manufacturing TP–based BEPS operations (versus cheaper options in Asia, like Apple's Foxconn), to give "substance" to their larger Irish IP–based BEPS tools.NEWS,weblink Revealed Eight facts you may not know about the Apple Irish plant, Irish Independent, Editorial, 15 December 2017, 29 April 2019, NEWS,weblink Apple's multi-billion dollar, low-tax profit hub: Knocknaheeny, Ireland, The Guardian, 29 May 2013, 29 April 2019, Simon Bowers, By refusing to implement the 2013 EU Accounting Directive (and invoking exemptions on reporting holding company structures until 2022), Ireland enables their TP and IP–based BEPS tools to structure as "unlimited liability companies" ("ULC") which do not have to file public accounts with the Irish CRO.WEB,weblink New report: is Apple paying less than 1% tax in the EU?, Tax Justice Network, 28 June 2018, The use of private "unlimited liability company" (ULC) status, which exempts companies from filing financial reports publicly. The fact that Apple, Google and many others continue to keep their Irish financial information secret is due to a failure by the Irish government to implement the 2013 EU Accounting Directive, which would require full public financial statements, until 2017, and even then retaining an exemption from financial reporting for certain holding companies until 2022, 29 April 2019, Alex Cobham, WEB,weblink Ireland's playing games in the last chance saloon of tax justice, Richard Murphy, 4 July 2018, Local subsidiaries of multinationals must always be required to file their accounts on public record, which is not the case at present. Ireland is not just a tax haven at present, it is also a corporate secrecy jurisdiction., 29 April 2019, Tax Research UK, Richard Murphy (tax campaigner), Ireland's Debt–based BEPS tools (e.g. the Section 110 SPV), have made Ireland the 3rd largest global Shadow Banking OFC,WEB,weblink Global Shadow Banking and Monitoring Report: 2017, 5 March 2018, Jurisdictions with the largest financial systems relative to GDP (Exhibit 2-3) tend to have relatively larger OFI [or Shadow Banking] sectors: Luxembourg (at 92% of total financial assets), the Cayman Islands (85%), Ireland (76%) and the Netherlands (58%), 30, Financial Stability Forum, 29 April 2019, NEWS,weblink Ireland has world's third largest shadow banking sector, hosting €2.02 trillion of assets, Irish Independent, 18 March 2018, Donal O'Donovan, 29 April 2019, and have been used by Russian banks to circumvent sanctions.NEWS,weblink How Russian Firms Funnelled €100bn through Dublin via Section 110 SPVs, Sunday Business Post, 4 March 2018, Jack Horgan-Jones, 29 April 2019, 125 Russian-linked companies raise €103 billion through IFSC; some entities linked to embargoed and sanctioned companies, NEWS,weblink More than €100bn in Russian Money funneled through Dublin in SPVs, Irish Times, 4 March 2018, 29 April 2019, Roundup, Irish Section 110 SPVs offer "orphaning" to protect the identity of the owner, and to shield the owner from Irish tax (the Section 110 SPV is an Irish company). They were used by U.S. distressed debt funds to avoid billions in Irish taxes,NEWS,weblink Loophole lets firms earning millions pay €250 tax, Dáil told, Irish Times, 6 July 2016, NEWS,weblink Vulture funds pay just €8,000 in tax on €10 billion of assets, TheJournal.ie, 8 January 2017, NEWS,weblink Revealed: How vulture funds paid €20k in tax on assets of €20bn, Sunday Business Post, 8 January 2017, 29 April 2019, Jack Horgan-Jones, assisted by Irish tax-law firms using in-house Irish children's charities to complete the orphan structure,NEWS,weblink Vulture funds using charities to avoid paying tax, says Donnelly, Irish Times, 14 July 2016, WEB,weblink Why would a Vulture Fund own a Children's Charity, Dáil Éireann, 24 November 2016, Stephen Donnelly, 29 April 2019, Stephen Donnelly, 11 June 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180611080321weblink">weblink dead, NEWS,weblink Kinsella: Charity status for vulture funds – someone shout stop!, Sunday Business Post, 24 July 2016, that enabled the U.S. distressed debt funds to export the gains on their Irish assets, free of any Irish taxes or duties, to Luxembourg and the Caribbean (see Section 110 abuse).WEB,weblink SECTION 110 and QIAIFs: How do vulture funds manage to pay practically no tax in Ireland?, Emma Clancy, 30 July 2016, NEWS,weblink How do vulture funds exploit Irish tax loopholes?, SPVs, QIAIFs and ICAVs. They're acronyms only corporate wonks could love. But they have entered the lexicon of the Dáil in recent months as Opposition members have highlighted how these corporate structures have been used to great advantage by so-called vulture funds to minimise taxes on property bought at bargain basement prices in recent years., Irish Times, 17 October 2016, Joe Brennan, 29 April 2019, Unlike the TP and IP–based BEPS tools, Section 110 SPVs must file public accounts with the Irish CRO, which was how the above abuses were discovered in 2016–17. In February 2018 the Central Bank of Ireland upgraded the little-used L–QIAIF regime to give the same tax benefits as Section 110 SPVs but without having to file public accounts. In June 2018, the Central Bank reported that €55 billion of U.S.–owned distressed Irish assets, equivalent to 25% of Irish GNI*, moved out of Irish Section 110 SPVs and into L–QIAIFs.NEWS,weblink Tax-free funds once favoured by 'vultures' fall €55bn: Regulator attributes decline to the decision of funds to exit their so-called 'section 110 status', Irish Times, 28 June 2018, Mark Paul, Regulator attributes decline to the decision of funds to exit their so-called ‘section 110 status’, 26 April 2019, NEWS,weblink Jack Horgan-Jones, Sunday Business Post, 29 July 2018, 26 April 2019, Vulture funds in new move to slash tax bills and escape regulation, Fianna Fáil claims that funds have discovered a "new nirvana". Documents also reveal new strategy to avoid regulation., NEWS,weblink Irish Times, Michael McAleer, 29 July 2018, 19 April 2019, Seen & heard: Tax avoiding Vulture funds and TransferMate's deal with ING, Vulture funds are putting in place new strategies to avoid tax and regulation, the Sunday Business Post reports. Citing a letter from Fianna Fail TD Stephen Donnelly to the Minister for Finance, it says the funds have moved substantial sums from the controversial Section 110 companies and into other entities called L-QIAIFs (loan-originating qualifying alternative investment funds). These do not file public accounts., {{anchor|Green Jersey}}Green Jersey BEPS tool{{see also|CAIA arrangement|Leprechaun economics}}File:Pre-Tax Profits of U.S. foreign subsidiaries (2015 BEA Data).jpg|thumb|upright=1.6|Profitability of U.S. subsidiaries (2015 BEA data).]]File:Where do U.S. multinationals book their profits (2016 BEA).png|thumb|upright=1.6|U.S. multinationals book over half of their non–U.S. profits in tax havens by using BEPS tools (2016 BEA).]]Apple's Q1 2015 Irish restructure, post their €13 billion EU tax fine for 2004–2014, is one of the most advanced OECD-compliant BEPS tools in the world. It integrates Irish IP–based BEPS tools, and Jersey Debt–based BEPS tools, to materially amplify the tax sheltering effects, by a factor of circa 2. Apple Ireland bought circa $300 billion of a "virtual" IP–asset from Apple Jersey in Q1 2015 (see leprechaun economics). The Irish "capital allowances for intangible assets" ("CAIA") BEPS tool allows Apple Ireland to write-off this virtual IP–asset against future Irish corporation tax. The €26.220 billion jump in intangible capital allowances claimed in 2015,WEB,weblink An Analysis of 2015 Corporation Tax Returns and 2016 Payments, Revenue Commissioners, April 2017, showed Apple Ireland is writing-off this IP–asset over a 10-year period. In addition, Apple Jersey gave Apple Ireland the $300 billion "virtual" loan to buy this virtual IP–asset from Apple Jersey. Thus, Apple Ireland can claim additional Irish corporation tax relief on this loan interest, which is circa $20 billion per annum (Apple Jersey pays no tax on the loan interest it receives from Apple Ireland). These tools, created entirely from virtual internal assets financed by virtual internal loans, give Apple circa €45 billion per annum in relief against Irish corporation tax. In June 2018 it was shown that Microsoft is preparing to copy this Apple scheme,NEWS,weblink Irish Microsoft firm worth $100bn ahead of merger, Sunday Business Post, 24 June 2018, known as "the Green Jersey".WEB,weblink New Report on Apple's New Irish Tax Structure, Tax Justice Network, Fowler, Naomi, 25 June 2018, WEB,weblink Apple's Irish Tax Deals, European United Left–Nordic Green Left EU Parliament, Martin Brehm Christensen, Emma Clancy, 21 June 2018, As the IP is a virtual internal asset, it can be replenished with each technology (or life sciences) product cycle (e.g. new virtual IP assets created offshore and then bought by the Irish subsidiary, with internal virtual loans, for higher prices). The Green Jersey thus gives a perpetual BEPS tool, like the double Irish, but at a much greater scale than the double Irish, as the full BEPS effect is capitalised on day one.Experts expect the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("TCJA") GILTI-regime to neutralise some Irish BEPS tools, including the single malt and the double Irish. Because Irish intangible capital allowances are accepted as U.S. GILTI deductions, the "Green Jersey" now enables U.S. multinationals to achieve net effective U.S. corporate tax rates of 0% to 2.5% via TCJA's participation relief. As Microsoft's main Irish BEPS tools are the single malt and the double Irish, in June 2018, Microsoft was preparing a "Green Jersey" Irish BEPS scheme. Irish experts, including Seamus Coffey, Chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and author of the Irish State's 2017 Review of Ireland's Corporation Tax Code,WEB,weblink Minister Donohoe publishes Review of Ireland's Corporation Tax Code, Department of Finance, 21 September 2017, WEB,weblink REVIEW OF IRELAND'S CORPORATION TAX CODE, PRESENTED TO THE MINISTER FOR FINANCE AND PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND REFORM, Seamus Coffey, Seamus Coffey, Department of Finance, 30 June 2017, expects a boom in U.S. on-shoring of virtual internal IP assets to Ireland, via the Green Jersey BEPS tool (e.g. under the capital allowances for intangible assets scheme).Domestic tax tools{{see also|Qualifying investor alternative investment fund (QIAIF)}}Ireland's Qualifying Investor Alternative Investment Fund ("QIAIF") regime is a range of five tax-free legal wrappers (ICAV, Investment Company, Unit Trust, Common Contractual Fund, Investment Limited Partnership).WEB,weblink KPMG Ireland: QIAIFs, KPMG, November 2015, WEB,weblink A Guide to Investing in QIAIFs, Dillon Eustace, November 2015, Four of the five wrappers do not file public accounts with the Irish CRO, and therefore offer tax confidentiality and tax secrecy.WEB,weblink QIAIFs Davy Stockbrokers Fund Services, Davy Stockbrokers, 2015, 19 June 2018, 19 June 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180619140536weblink">weblink dead, WEB,weblink Establishing a QIAIF in Ireland, Matheson (law firm), 2014, 19 June 2018, 22 February 2016,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160222080211weblink">weblink dead, While they are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, like the Section 110 SPV, it has been shown many are effectively unregulated "brass plate" entities.WEB,weblink TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN: Ireland, Global Finance and the Russian Connection, Professor Jim Stewart Cillian Doyle, 21, Regulation has been described as light touch regulation/unregulated, 27 February 2018, NEWS,weblink A third of Ireland's shadow banking subject to little or no oversight: A report published on Wednesday by the Swiss-based Financial Stability Board., The Irish Times, 10 May 2017, NEWS,weblink Irish politicians are "mindlessly in favour" of growing the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), according to a former deputy governor of the Central Bank, Former Irish Central Bank Deputy Governor says Irish politicians mindless of IFSC risks, Irish Times, 5 March 2018, 29 April 2019, Mark Paul, WEB,weblink TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN: 'Section 110' Companies. A Success story for Ireland?, Professor Jim Stewart Cillian Doyle, The same source in comparing different investment vehicles states that :- Another positive of the Section 110 Company is that there are no regulatory restrictions regarding lending as is the case with a QIF (Qualifying Investor Fund)., 20, 12 January 2017, NEWS,weblink IMF queries lawyers and bankers on hundreds of IFSC SPV boards, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised concerns about instances where individual bankers and lawyers were appointed to hundreds of boards of unregulated special-purpose vehicles in Dublin's International Financial Services Centre., The Irish Times, 30 September 2016, The Central Bank has no mandate to investigate tax avoidance or tax evasion, and under the 1942 Central Bank Secrecy Act, the Central Bank of Ireland cannot send the confidential information which QIAIFs must file with the Bank to the Irish Revenue.NEWS,weblink Powerful Central Bank secrecy laws limit public disclosure of key documents, January 2016, Irish Times, QIAIFs have been used in tax avoidance on Irish assets,WEB,weblink There are yet more Irish laws that allow foreign property investors to operate here tax-free, Certain funds in operation here are seeing foreign property investors paying no tax on income. The value of property owned in these QIAIFs is in the region of €300 billion., thejournal.ie, 10 September 2016, NEWS,weblink Clerys owner exploits tax avoidance loophole: Majority of shuttered Dublin store owned by collective asset vehicle (ICAV), Irish Times, 4 October 2016, Icavs were introduced last year, following lobbying by the funds industry, to tempt certain types of offshore fund business to Ireland. It has since emerged, however, that the structures have been widely utilised to avoid tax on Irish property., NEWS,weblink Kennedy Wilson firm pays no tax on its €1bn Irish property assets with QIAIFs, Mulligan, John, 6 August 2016, Irish Independent, 19 July 2018, NEWS,weblink Central Bank landlord a vulture fund paying no Irish tax using a QIF, says SF, Irish Independent, 28 August 2016, on circumventing international regulations,NEWS,weblink Nicholas Shaxson, Tax 'trickery' in Ireland: A safe haven you can bank on, Ireland is a wonderful, special country in many ways. But when it comes to providing foreigners with lax financial regulation or tax trickery, it is a goddamned rogue state, Irish Times, 29 May 2013, Nicholas Shaxson, on avoiding tax laws in the EU and the U.S.NEWS,weblink 'Strong evidence' Ireland aiding EU banks' tax-avoidance schemes, The massive profitability levels of European banks in Ireland suggests that large profits may be reported in Ireland as a tax-avoidance strategy, Irish Independent, 28 March 2017, NEWS,weblink Irish 'tax haven' benefits from offshore asset shifts, reports New York Federal Reserve, The massive profitability levels of European banks in Ireland suggests that large profits may be reported in Ireland as a tax-avoidance strategy, Irish Independent, 13 May 2018, QIAIFs can be combined with Irish corporate BEPS tools (e.g. the Orphaned Super–QIF), to create routes out of the Irish corporate tax system to Luxembourg,WEB,weblink 20, Figure 3. Foreign Direct Investment – Over half of Irish outbound FDI is routed to Luxembourg, Ireland:Selected Issues, International Monetary Fund, June 2018, the main Sink OFC for Ireland.WEB,weblink Ireland as a location for Distressed Debt: Orphaned Super QIF Example, Davy Stockbrokers, 2014, WEB,weblink Irish SPV Taxation, Irish withholding tax on transfers to Luxembourg can be avoided if structured as a Eurobond, Grant Thornton, 30 September 2015, WEB,weblink Mason Hayes and Curran:Silver Linings from Ireland's Financial Clouds with QIAIFs and Section 110 SPVs, Mason Hayes & Curran Law, May 2016, It is asserted that a material amount of assets in Irish QIAIFs, and the ICAV wrapper in particular, are Irish assets being shielded from Irish taxation.WEB,weblink How foreign firms are making a killing in buying Irish property, The Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle was a nifty little tax structure introduced last year. Designed to primarily facilitate the transfer of U.S. funds into Dublin, it allows foreign investors to channel their investments through Ireland while paying no tax., Irish examiner, 22 August 2016, NEWS,weblink Fears over tax leakage via investors' ICAV vehicles, Internal Department of Finance briefing documents reveal that officials believe there has been "extremely significant" tax leakage due to investors using special purpose vehicles., Sunday Times, 26 February 2017, Offshore magic circle law firms (e.g. Walkers and Maples and Calder, who have set up offices in Ireland), market the Irish ICAV as a superior wrapper to the Cayman SPC (Maples and Calder claim to be a major architect of the ICAV),WEB,weblink New Irish Fund Vehicle to Facilitate U.S. Investment – the ICAV, 2015, Walkers (law firm), WEB,weblink The ICAV – Maples and Calder Checks the Box, Since then we have retained our position as the leading Irish counsel on ICAVs and to date have advised on 30% of all ICAV sub-funds authorised by the Central Bank, which is nearly twice as many as our nearest rival., Maples and Calder, March 2016, WEB,weblink IRISH FUNDS ASSOCIATION: ICAV Breakfast Seminar New York, Irish Funds Association, November 2015, 16, ANDREA KELLY (PwC Ireland): "We expect most Irish QIAIFs to be structured as ICAVs from now on and given that ICAVs are superior tax management vehicles to the Cayman Island SPCs, Ireland should attract substantial re-domiciling business, 1 July 2018,weblink 2 December 2017, dead, and there are explicit QIAIF rules to help with re-domiciling of Cayman/BVI funds into Irish ICAVs.WEB,weblink Conversion of a BVI or Cayman Fund to an Irish ICAV, William Fry Law Firm, 1 October 2015,Captured state{{anchor|Captured state}}{{see also|Tax haven#Captured state}}File:Enda Kenny Feargal O'Rourke Taken at IBEC 2014 Conference Flickr.jpg|thumb|Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny (l) PwC (Ireland) Managing Partner Feargal O'Rourke (r), architect of the (double Irish]] BEPS tool.WEB,weblink FEARGAL O'ROURKE: Man Making Ireland Tax Avoidance Hub Proves Local Hero, Bloomberg News, 28 October 2013, )There is evidence Ireland meets the captured state criteria for tax havens.BOOK, Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 978-0-230-10501-0, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, 187, [Ireland] It is the "captured state", over again., Nicholas Shaxson, BOOK, Cornell University Press, 978-0-8014-7612-9, Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy (tax campaigner), Richard Murphy, Christian Chavagneux, Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works, 2009, 102, John Christensen and Mark Hampton (1999) have shown [..] how several tax havens [including Ireland] have in effect been "captured" by these private interests, which literally draft local laws to suit their interests., Ronen Palan, WEB,weblink How Ireland became an offshore financial centre, But on another level this is an Irish version of a phenomenon we’ve encountered across the tax haven world: the state ‘captured’ by offshore financial services., Tax Justice Network, Nicholas Shaxson, November 2015, 29 April 2019, Nicholas Shaxson, When the EU investigated Apple in Ireland in 2016 they found private tax rulings from the Irish Revenue giving Apple a tax rate of 0.005% on over EUR€110 billion of cumulative Irish profits from 2004 to 2014.WEB,weblink COMMISSION DECISION of 30.8.2016 on STATE AID SA. 38373 (2014/C) (ex 2014/NN) (ex 2014/CP) implemented by Ireland to Apple, 30 August 2016, EU Commission, Brussels. 30.8.2016 C(2016) 5605 final. Total Pages (130), WEB,weblink State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13 billion, Margrethe Vestager, The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 percent in 2014., EU Commission, 30 August 2016, 29 April 2019, Margrethe Vestager, JOURNAL, The Rotten Apple: Tax Avoidance in Ireland, The International Trade Journal, 32, 150–161, 2 August 2017, 10.1080/08853908.2017.1356250, Barrera, Rita, Bustamante, Jessica, 158385468, When the Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan was alerted by an Irish MEP in 2016 to a new Irish BEPS tool to replace the Double Irish (called the Single Malt), he was told to "put on the green jersey".WEB,weblink Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 23 Nov 2017, Oireachtas, House of the Oireachtas, 23 November 2017, 24 April 2019, Pearse Doherty: It was interesting that when [MEP] Matt Carthy put that to the Minister's predecessor (Michael Noonan), his response was that this was very unpatriotic and he should wear the green jersey. That was the former Minister's response to the fact there is a major loophole, whether intentional or unintentional, in our tax code that has allowed large companies to continue to use the double Irish [called single malt], Oireachtas Record, When Apple executed the largest BEPS transaction in history in Q1 2015, the Central Statistics Office suppressed data to hide Apple's identity.WEB,weblink CSO Press Release, Central Statistics Office (Ireland), As a consequence of the overall scale of these additions, elements of the results that would previously been published are now suppressed to protect the confidentiality of the contributing companies, in accordance with the Statistics Act 1993, 12 July 2016, 29 April 2019, WEB,weblink Tax Avoidance and the Irish Balance of Payments, Council on Foreign Relations, 25 April 2018, Brad Setser, 29 April 2019, Brad Setser, Noonan changed the capital allowances for intangible assets scheme rules, the IP–based BEPS tool Apple used in Q1 2015, to reduce Apple's effective tax rate from 2.5% to 0%.NEWS,weblink Change in tax treatment of intellectual property and subsequent and reversal hard to fathom, Irish Times, 8 November 2017, Cliff Taylor, 29 April 2019, When it was discovered in 2016 that U.S. distressed debt funds abused Section 110 SPVs to shield €80 billion in Irish loan balances from Irish taxes, the Irish State did not investigate or prosecute (see Section 110 abuse). In February 2018, the Central Bank of Ireland, which regulates Section 110 SPVs, upgraded the little used tax-free L-QIAIF regime, which has stronger privacy from public scrutiny.WEB,weblink CENTRAL BANK OF IRELAND: Enhancements to the L-QIAIF regime announced, Matheson (law firm), 29 November 2016, In June 2018, U.S. distressed debt funds transferred €55 billion of Irish assets (or 25% of Irish GNI*), out of Section 110 SPVs and into L–QIAIFs.The June 2017 OECD Anti-BEPS MLI was signed by 70 jurisdictions.WEB,weblink Turning the Tide: The OECD's Multilateral Instrument Has Been Signed, SquirePattonBoggs, July 2017, The corporate tax havens, including Ireland, opted out of the key Article 12.{{blockquote|Global legal firm Baker McKenzie,NEWS,weblink A key architect [for Apple] was Baker McKenzie, a huge law firm based in Chicago. The firm has a reputation for devising creative offshore structures for multinationals and defending them to tax regulators. It has also fought international proposals for tax avoidance crackdowns., After a Tax Crackdown, Apple Found a New Shelter for Its Profits, New York Times, 6 November 2017, Jesse Drucker, Simon Bowers, representing a coalition of 24 multinational U.S. software firms, including Microsoft, lobbied Michael Noonan, as [Irish] minister for finance, to resist the [OECD MLI] proposals in January 2017. In a letter to him the group recommended Ireland not adopt article 12, as the changes "will have effects lasting decades" and could "hamper global investment and growth due to uncertainty around taxation". The letter said that "keeping the current standard will make Ireland a more attractive location for a regional headquarters by reducing the level of uncertainty in the tax relationship with Ireland's trading partners".|author=Irish Times. "Ireland resists closing corporation tax 'loophole'", 10 November 2017.NEWS, Ireland resists closing corporation tax 'loophole',weblink Irish Times, 10 November 2017, }}File:THE CENTRAL BANK OF IRELAND (NEW HEADQUARTER BUILDING ON NORTH WALL QUAY)- ALONG BOTANIC AVENUE (JANUARY 2018)-135337 (39605114602).jpg|thumb|Central Bank of Ireland ("CBI") regulates QIAIFs. When Irish public tax scandals concerning the Section 110 SPV, also regulated by the CBI, emerged in 2016, the CBI upgraded the little–used LQIAIF, to give the same benefits as Section 110 SPVs, but with confidentiality and tax secrecy.]]Tax haven investigator Nicholas Shaxson documented how Ireland's captured state uses a complex and "siloed" network of Irish privacy and data protection laws to navigate around the fact that its tax tools are OECD–whitelisted, and therefore must be transparent to some State entity. For example, Irish tax-free QIAIFs (and L–QIAIFs) are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and must provide the Bank with details of their financials. However, the 1942 Central Bank Secrecy Act prevents the Central Bank from sending this data to the Revenue Commissioners. Similarly, the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) stated it had to restrict its public data release in 2016–17 to protect the Apple's identity during its 2015 BEPS action, because the 1993 Central Statistics Act prohibits use of economic data for revealing such activities.WEB,weblink Official Statistics and Data Protection Legislation, Central Statistics Office (Ireland), 2018, Confidentiality and use of information for statistical purposes: Information obtained under the Statistics Act is strictly confidential, under Section 33 of the Statistics Act, 1993. It may only be accessed by Officers of Statistics, who are required to sign a Declaration of Secrecy under Section 21., 29 April 2019, When the EU Commission fined Apple €13 billion for illegal State aid in 2016, there were no official records of any discussion of the tax deal given to Apple outside of the Irish Revenue Commissioners as such data is also protected.NEWS,weblink IRISH EX. TAOISEACH BERTIE AHERN: Revenue 'kept Apple tax deal from cabinet', Sunday Times, 14 November 2016, 29 April 2019, Justine McCarthy, Stephen O’Brien, When Tim Cook stated in 2016 that Apple was the largest tax-payer in Ireland, the Irish Revenue Commissioners quoted Section 815A of the 1997 Tax Acts that prevents them disclosing such information, even to members of Dáil Éireann, or the Irish Department of Finance (despite the fact that Apple is circa one-fifth of Ireland's GDP).NEWS,weblink FactCheck: Is Apple really the "largest taxpayer in Ireland"?, Revenue said: "Interactions between Revenue and individual taxpayers are subject to the taxpayer confidentiality provisions of Section 851A"., TheJournal.ie, 4 September 2016, 29 April 2019, Dan MacGuill, Commentators note the plausible deniability provided by Irish privacy and data protection laws, that enable the State to function as a tax haven while maintaining OECD compliance. They ensure the State entity regulating each tax tool are "siloed" from the Irish Revenue, and public scrutiny via FOI laws.WEB,weblink How Ireland became a tax haven and offshore financial centre, Nicholas Shaxson, Tax Justice Network, 11 November 2015, 29 April 2019, The willingness to brush dirt under the carpet to support the financial sector, and an equating of these policies with patriotism (sometimes known in Ireland as the Green Jersey agenda,) contributed to the remarkable regulatory laxity with massive impacts in other nations (as well as in Ireland itself) as global financial firms sought an escape from financial regulation in Dublin., Nicholas Shaxson, NEWS,weblink 'Nobody believes Ireland is not a tax haven' – UN official, "The Irish authorities knew exactly what was going on, long before the international community finally blew the whistle., Professor Philip Alston, Irish Times, 13 February 2015, 29 April 2019, In February 2019, The Guardian reported on leaked Facebook internal reports revealing the influence Facebook had on the Irish State, to which Cambridge University academic John Naughton stated: "the leak was “explosive†in the way it revealed the “vassalage†of the Irish state to the big tech companies".NEWS,weblink Revealed: Facebook's global lobbying against data privacy laws, 2 March 2019, 2 March 2019, The Guardian, Carole Cadwall, Duncan Campbell, In April 2019, Politico reported on concerns that Ireland was protecting Facebook and Google from the new EU GDPR regulations, stating: "Despite its vows to beef up its threadbare regulatory apparatus, Ireland has a long history of catering to the very companies it is supposed to oversee, having wooed top Silicon Valley firms to the Emerald Isle with promises of low taxes, open access to top officials, and help securing funds to build glittering new headquarters."WEB,weblink How one country blocks the world on data privacy, Politico, Nicholas Vincour, 24 April 2019, 29 April 2019,US multinational companies in IrelandFile:EUROSTAT Ireland Gross Operating Surplus by Controlling Country, €million 2015.png|thumb|upright=1.0|Dominance of US companies: Irish corporate Gross Operating Surplus (i.e. profits), by the controlling country of the company (note: a material part of the Irish figure is also from US tax inversions that are US–controlled). Eurostat (2015).WEB,weblink Who shifts profits to Ireland, Economic Incentives, University College Cork, Seamus Coffey, Irish Fiscal Advisory CouncilIrish Fiscal Advisory CouncilAmerican multinationals play a substantial role in Ireland's economy, attracted by Ireland's BEPS tools, that shield their non–US profits from the historical US "worldwide" corporate tax system. In contrast, multinationals from countries with "territorial" tax systems, by far the most common corporate tax system in the world, do not need to use corporate–tax havens such as Ireland, as their foreign income is taxed at much lower rates.JOURNAL,weblink Multinational Firms and Tax Havens, James R. Hines Jr., Anna Gumpert, Monika Schnitzer, 2016, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 714, Germany taxes only 5% of the active foreign business profits of its resident corporations. [..] Similarly, Irish multinationals do not benefit from this system as the Revenue Commissioners tax Irish Companies on worldwide income, whereas the IRS only tax profits repatriated to the USA. Furthermore, German firms do not have incentives to structure their foreign operations in ways that avoid repatriating income. Therefore, the tax incentives for German firms to establish tax haven affiliates are likely to differ from those of US firms and bear strong similarities to those of other G-7 and OECD firms., 98, 4, For example, in 2016–17, US–controlled multinationals in Ireland:
| ||||||||||||||||
| | 119.2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CRH plc> | | 27.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 26.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 26.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 18.5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 16.5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DCC plc> | | 13.9 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 12.9 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 12.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 12.4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 11.5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 10.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 8.8 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Smurfit Kappa Group> | | 8.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ardagh Group>Ardagh Glass | Ireland | – | – | 7.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 7.5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ryanair> | | 6.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kerry Group> | | 6.4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 6.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 5.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 5.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primark>Penneys Ireland | Ireland | – | – | 4.4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total Produce> | | 4.3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 4.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 3.9 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Musgrave Group> | | 3.7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kingspan Group> | | 3.7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dunnes Stores> | | 3.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 3.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ESB Group > | | 3.2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 3.2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Grafton Group> | | 3.1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.9 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.9 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Larry Goodman>ABP Food Group | Ireland | – | – | 2.8 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.7 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Greencore> | | 2.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Circle K Ireland> | | 2.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Glanbia plc> | | 2.4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ornua Dairy> | | 2.1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | 2.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Paddy Power> | | 2.0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ICON Plc> | | 1.9 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| leprechaun economics on Apple as one-fifth of Irish GDP); | Corporate haven#U.K. transformation>UK transformation to a "territorial" model;| Irish–controlled firms are 22 of the top 50 and represent €117.7 billion of the €454.4 billion in total 2017 revenue (or 26%);| There are no other firms in the top 50 Irish companies from other jurisdictions.}}Rebuttals{{anchor|Rebuttal of labels}}Effective tax rates{{see also|Corporation tax in the Republic of Ireland#Effective tax rate (ETR)}}The Irish State refutes tax haven labels as unfair criticism of its low, but legitimate, 12.5% Irish corporate tax rate,NEWS,weblink Irish Taoiseach rebuts Oxfam claim that Ireland is a tax haven, Irish Times, But Mr Kenny noted that Oxfam included Ireland's 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate as one of the factors for deeming it a tax haven. "The 12.5 per cent is fully in line with the OECD and international best practice in having a low rate and applying it to a very wide tax base.", 14 December 2016, WEB,weblink 'Ireland is not a tax haven': Department of Finance dismisses 'tax haven' research findings, thejournal.ie, Suggestions that Ireland are a tax haven simply because of our longstanding 12.5% corporate tax rate are totally out of line with the agreed global consensus that a low corporate tax rate applied to a wide tax base is good economic policy for attracting investment and supporting economic growth., 13 June 2018, which it defends as being the effective tax rate ("ETR").WEB,weblink Effective Corporate Tax in Ireland: April 2014, Department of Finance, April 2014, Independent studies show that Ireland's aggregate effective corporate tax rate is between 2.2% to 4.5% (depending on assumptions made).WEB,weblink TAX JUSTICE NETWORK: Ireland Financial Secrecy Index Country Report 2014, Misleadingly, studies cited by the Irish Times and other outlets suggest that the effective tax rate is close to the headline 12.5 percent rate – but this is a fictional result based on a theoretical 'standard firm with 60 employees' and no exports: it is entirely inapplicable to transnationals. Though there are various ways to calculate effective tax rates, other studies find rates of just 2.5–4.5 percent., Tax Justice Network, November 2014, 18 June 2018, 14 June 2018,weblink dead, WEB,weblink APPENDIX 1 Table 2 : The Missing Profits of Nations, 31, Ireland's effective tax rate on all foreign corporates (U.S. and non-U.S.) is 4%, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Papers, Gabriel Zucman, Thomas Torslov, Ludvig Wier, June 2018, Gabriel Zucman, NEWS,weblink A study by James Stewart, associate professor in finance at Trinity College Dublin, suggests that in 2011 the subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals in Ireland paid an effective tax rate of 2.2 per cent., Effective Corporate Tax calculations: 2.2%, Irish Times, 14 February 2014, WEB,weblink Ireland: Where Profits Pile Up, Helping Multinationals Keep Taxes Low, Bloomberg News, Meanwhile, the tax rate reported by those Irish subsidiaries of U.S. companies plummeted to 3% from 9% by 2010, October 2013, This lower aggregate effective tax rate is consistent with the individual effective tax rates of U.S. multinationals in Ireland (U.S.–controlled multinationals are 14 of Ireland's largest 20 companies, and Apple alone is over one-fifth of Irish GDP; see "low tax economy"),WEB,weblink 3, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN BUSINESS SCHOOL: Irish MNC Tax Strategies, Ireland meets all of these characteristics and together with Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland have been described as the four OECD tax havens., Professor Jim Stewart, Trinity College Dublin, 2016,weblink 8 April 2022, WEB,weblink Pinning Down Apple's Alleged 0.005% Tax Rate in Ireland Is Nearly Impossible, Bloomberg News, 1 September 2016, NEWS,weblink 'Double Irish' and 'Dutch Sandwich' saved Google $3.7bn in tax in 2016, Irish Times, 2 January 2018, NEWS,weblink Facebook Ireland pays tax of just €30m on €12.6bn, Irish Examiner, 29 November 2017, NEWS,weblink Oracle paid just €11m tax on Irish turnover of €7bn, Irish Independent, 28 April 2014, as well as the IP–based BEPS tools openly marketed by the main tax-law firms in the Irish International Financial Services Centre with ETRs of 0–2.5% (see "effective tax rate").WEB,weblink Maples and Calder Irish Intellectual Property Tax Regime – 2.5% Effective Tax, Structure 1: The profits of the Irish company will typically be subject to the corporation tax rate of 12.5% if the company has the requisite level of substance to be considered trading. The tax depreciation and interest expense can reduce the effective rate of tax to a minimum of 2.5%., Maples and Calder, February 2018, WEB,weblink Ireland as a European gateway jurisdiction for China – outbound and inbound investments, The tax deduction can be used to achieve an effective tax rate of 2.5% on profits from the exploitation of the IP purchased. Provided the IP is held for five years, a subsequent disposal of the IP will not result in a clawback., Matheson (law firm), Matheson, March 2013, 19 June 2018, 12 July 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180712182634weblink">weblink dead, WEB,weblink Uses of Ireland for German Companies: Irish "Intellectual Property" Tax of 2.5%, Intellectual Property: The effective corporation tax rate can be reduced to as low as 2.5% for Irish companies whose trade involves the exploitation of intellectual property. The Irish IP regime is broad and applies to all types of IP. A generous scheme of capital allowances in Ireland offers significant incentives to companies who locate their activities in Ireland. A well-known global company [Accenture in 2009] recently moved the ownership and exploitation of an IP portfolio worth approximately $7 billion to Ireland., Arthur Cox Law Firm, 3, January 2012, WEB,weblink World Intellectual Property Day: IRELAND'S 2.5% IP Tax Rate (Section 4.1.1), Mason Hayes and Curran (Law Firm), When combined with other features of Ireland’s IP tax regime, an effective rate as low as 2.5% can be achieved on IP related income, April 2013, File:EU State Aid Case Ireland Apple.jpg|thumb|EU Commission's outline of Apple's hybrid–double Irish BEPS tax structure in Ireland, that used two branches inside a single company based on private rulings from the Irish Revenue CommissionersRevenue CommissionersFile:Conversation with Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition (17222242662).jpg|thumb|(Margrethe Vestager]] European Commissioner for Competition who led case SA:38373 on illegal State aid to Apple in Ireland (2004–2014).)Two of the world's main {{slink||Leaders in tax haven research}}, estimated Ireland's effective corporate tax rate to be 4%: James R. Hines Jr. in his 1994 Hines–Rice paper on tax havens, estimated Ireland's effective corporate rate was 4% (Appendix 4); Gabriel Zucman, 24 years later, in his June 2018 paper on corporate tax havens, also estimated Ireland's effective corporate tax to be 4% (Appendix 1).The disconnect between the ETR of 12.5% claimed by the Irish State and its advisors, and the actual ETRs of 2.2–4.5% calculated by independent experts, is because the Irish tax code considers a high percentage of Irish income as not being subject to Irish taxation, due to various exclusions and deductions. The gap of 12.5% vs. 2.2–4.5% implies that well over two-thirds of corporate profits booked in Ireland are excluded from Irish corporate taxation (see Irish ETR).{{blockquote|This selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014.|source=Margrethe Vestager, "(EU illegal State aid case against Apple in Ireland|State aid (SA.38373): Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13 billion)" (30 August 2016)WEB,weblink European Commission – PRESS RELEASES – Press release – State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13 billion, 30 August 2016, europa.eu, 14 November 2016, }}{{blockquote|Applying a 12.5% rate in a tax code that shields most corporate profits from taxation, is indistinguishable from applying a near 0% rate in a normal tax code.|source=Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg View (11 February 2014)}}The Irish State does not refer to QIAIFs (or L–QIAIFs), or Section 110 SPVs, which allow non-resident investors to hold Irish assets indefinitely without incurring Irish taxes, VAT or duties (e.g. permanent "base erosion" to the Irish exchequer as QIAIF units and SPV shares can be traded), and which can be combined with Irish BEPS tools to avoid all Irish corporate taxation (see {{slink||Domestic tax tools}}).Salary taxes, VAT, and CGT for Irish residents are in line with rates of other EU–28 countries, and tend to be slightly higher than EU–28 averages in many cases. Because of this, Ireland has a special lower salary tax rate scheme, and other tax bonuses, for employees of foreign multinationals earning over €75,000 ("SARP").WEB, Extension of SARP Scheme Tax incentives for foreign staff rejected,weblink Under the arrangement – known as the special assignee relief (Sarp) – 30% of income above €75,000 is exempt from income tax. Those who benefit are also allowed a €5,000 per child tax–free allowance for school fees, if those fees are paid by their employer, 29 December 2017, The OECD's "Hierarchy of Taxes" pyramid (from the Department of Finance Tax Strategy Group's 2011 tax policy document) summarises Ireland's tax strategy.WEB, Tax Strategy Group: Irish Corporate Taxation, 3,weblink October 2011, 4 July 2018, 24 April 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180424201818weblink">weblink dead,OECD 1998 definition{{see also|Tax havens#Definitions}}EU and U.S. studies that attempted to find a consensus on the definition of a tax haven, have concluded that there is no consensus (see tax haven definitions).WEB,weblink Understanding the rationale for compiling 'tax haven' lists, EU Parliament Research, 3, There is no single definition of a tax haven, although there are a number of commonalities in the various concepts used, December 2017, The Irish State, and its advisors, have refuted the tax haven label by invoking the 1998 OCED definition of a "tax haven" as the consensus definition:NEWS,weblink Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe insists Ireland is not 'world's biggest tax haven': Report finds more multinational profits moved through Republic than the Caribbean, Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC member and economist Martina Lawless said on the basis of the OECD's criteria for tax havens, which are internationally recognised, Ireland was not one., Irish Times, 13 June 2018, WEB,weblink What Makes a Country a Tax Haven? An Assessment of International Standards Shows Why Ireland Is Not a Tax Haven, Department of Finance (Ireland)/Economic and Social Research Institute Review, 403, Gary Tobin (Department of Finance (Ireland)), Keith Walsh (Revenue Commissioners), September 2013, 18 June 2018, 25 April 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180425130055weblink">weblink dead, NEWS,weblink The OECD outlined certain factors which in its view described a tax haven., Tom Maguire Tax Partner DELOITTE: Why Ireland's transparency and tax regime means it is not a haven, Irish Independent, February 2018, NEWS,weblink The OECD stated that for a country to be a tax haven, it had to have certain characteristics., Suzanne Kelly PAST PRESIDENT IRISH TAX INSTITUTE: There is a definition of a tax haven – and Ireland doesn't make that grade, Irish Independent, 2 February 2016, {{ordered list|type=lower-roman|No or nominal tax on the relevant income; |Lack of effective exchange of information; (with OECD)|Lack of transparency; (with OECD) | No substantial activities (e.g. tolerance of brass plate company>brass plate companies). ‡}}Most Irish BEPS tools and QIAIFs are OECD–whitelisted (and can thus avail of Ireland's 70 bilateral tax treaties),WEB,weblink Tax Sandwich: Ireland's OECD–compliant tax tools, Mason Hayes & Curran, 2014, WEB,weblink Ireland as a domicile for QIAIFs, Matheson (law firm), August 2016, 19 June 2018, 12 December 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20171212031337weblink">weblink dead, and therefore while Ireland could meet the first OECD test, it fails the second and third OECD tests. The fourth OECD test (‡) was withdrawn by the OECD in 2002 on protest from the U.S., which indicates is a political dimension to the definition.WEB,weblink IDENTIFYING TAX HAVENS AND OFFSHORE FINANCE CENTRES, Various attempts have been made to identify and list tax havens and offshore finance centres (OFCs). This Briefing Paper aims to compare these lists and clarify the criteria used in preparing them., Tax Justice Network and Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, July 2007, Laurens Booijink, Francis Weyzig, WEB,weblink The OECD Initiative on Tax Havens, 11 March 2010, Congressional Research Service, James K. Jackson, 7, As a result of the Bush Administration’s efforts, the OECD backed away from its efforts to target “harmful tax practices†and shifted the scope of its efforts to improving exchanges of tax information between member countries., In 2017, only one jurisdiction, Trinidad & Tobago, met the 1998 OECD definition of a tax haven (Trinidad & Tobago is not one of the 35 OECD member countries), and the definition has fallen into disrepute.NEWS,weblink Trinidad & Tobago left as the last blacklisted tax haven, Financial Times, Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network said: It's disheartening to see the OECD fall back into the old pattern of creating 'tax haven' blacklists on the basis of criteria that are so weak as to be near enough meaningless, and then declaring success when the list is empty.", September 2017, 29 April 2019, Vanessa Houlder, WEB,weblink History of Tax Havens, Ronen Palan, The OECD is clearly ill-equipped to deal with tax-havens, not least as many of its members, including the UK, Switzerland, Ireland and the Benelux countries are themselves considered tax havens, History and Policy, 1 October 2009, Ronen Palan, WEB,weblink Oxfam disputes opaque OECD failing just one tax haven on transparency, Oxfam, 30 June 2017, 20 June 2018,weblink 20 June 2018, dead, Tax haven academic James R. Hines Jr. notes that OECD tax haven lists never include the 35 OECD member countries (Ireland is a founding OECD member). The OECD definition was produced in 1998 as part of the OECD's investigation into Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue.WEB,weblink Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue, OECD, 1998, By 2000, when the OECD published their first list of 35 tax havens,WEB,weblink Towards Global Tax Co-operation, April 2000, 17, OECD, TAX HAVENS: 1.Andorra 2.Anguilla 3.Antigua and Barbuda 4.Aruba 5.Bahamas 6.Bahrain 7.Barbados 8.Belize 9.British Virgin Islands 10.Cook Islands 11.Dominica 12.Gibraltar 13.Grenada 14.Guernsey 15.Isle of Man 16.Jersey 17.Liberia 18.Liechtenstein 19.Maldives 20.Marshall Islands 21.Monaco 22.Montserrat 23.Nauru 24.Net Antilles 25.Niue 26.Panama 27.Samoa 28.Seychelles 29.St. Lucia 30.St. Kitts & Nevis 31.St. Vincent and the Grenadines 32.Tonga 33.Turks & Caicos 34.U.S. Virgin Islands 35.Vanuatu, it included no OECD member countries as they were now all considered to have engaged in the OECD's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (see {{slink||External links}}). Because the OECD has never listed any of its 35 members as tax havens, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland are sometimes referred to as the "OECD tax havens".Subsequent definitions of tax haven, and/or offshore financial centre/corporate tax haven (see definition of a "tax haven"), focus on effective taxes as the primary requirement, which Ireland would meet, and have entered the general lexicon.NEWS,weblink Financial Times Lexicon: Definition of tax haven, A country with little or no taxation that offers foreign individuals or corporations residency so that they can avoid tax at home., Financial Times, June 2018, 19 June 2018,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180617115721weblink">weblink 17 June 2018, dead, WEB, Tax haven definition and meaning {{!, Collins English Dictionary|quote=A tax haven is a country or place which has a low rate of tax so that people choose to live there or register companies there in order to avoid paying higher tax in their own countries.|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tax-haven|publisher=Collins Dictionary|access-date=27 December 2017|language=en}}WEB, Tax haven definition and meaning {{!, Cambridge English Dictionary |quote=a place where people pay less tax than they would pay if they lived in their own country|url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tax-haven|publisher=Cambridge English Dictionary|date=2018|language=en}} The Tax Justice Network, who places Ireland on its tax haven list, split the concept of tax rates from tax transparency by defining a secrecy jurisdiction and creating the Financial Secrecy Index. The OECD has never updated or amended its 1998 definition (apart from dropping the 4th criteria). The Tax Justice Network imply the U.S. may be the reason.WEB,weblink Empty OECD 'tax haven' blacklist undermines progress, Tax Justice Network, 26 June 2017, EU 2017 tax haven listsWhile by 2017, the OECD only considered Trinidad and Tobago to be a tax haven,NEWS,weblink OECD Chief: 'Ireland is not a tax haven', TheJournal.ie, 23 July 2013, 29 April 2019, Hugh O'Connell, Pascal Saint Amans, the director of the OCED’s centre for tax policy and administration, told an Oireachtas Committee today that Ireland does not meet any of the organisation’s criteria to be defined as a tax haven – that there is no taxes, no transparency and no exchange of information, in 2017 the EU produced a list of 17 tax havens, plus another 47 jurisdictions on the "grey list",NEWS,weblink EU blacklist names 17 tax havens and puts Caymans and Jersey on notice, The Guardian, 5 December 2017, however, as with the OECD lists above, the EU list did not include any EU-28 jurisdictions.NEWS,weblink Outbreak of 'so whatery' over EU tax haven blacklist, Irish Times, It was certainly an improvement on the list recently published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which featured only one name – Trinidad & Tobago – but campaigners believe the European Union has much more to do if it is to prove it is serious about addressing tax havens., 7 December 2017, Only one of the EU's 17 blacklisted tax havens, namely Samoa, appeared in the July 2017 Top 20 tax havens list from CORPNET.The EU Commission was criticised for not including Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta and Cyprus,WEB,weblink Where is Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands on the new EU blacklist, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 5 December 2017, NEWS,weblink EU puts 17 countries on tax haven blacklist, EU members were not screened but Oxfam said that if the criteria were applied to publicly available information the list should feature 35 countries including EU members Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Malta, Financial Times, 8 December 2017, and Pierre Moscovici, explicitly stated to an Irish State Oireachtas Finance Committee on 24 January 2017: Ireland is not a tax haven,WEB,weblink Ireland is not a Tax Haven – EU Commissioner, Moscovici, Chartered Accountants Ireland, 27 January 2017, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici was in Dublin on Tuesday, appearing before the Oireachtas Finance Committee where he faced questions from TDs and Senators on the relaunched Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB)., although he subsequently called Ireland and the Netherlands "tax black holes" on 18 January 2018.WEB,weblink EU's Moscovici slams Ireland, Netherlands as tax 'black holes', France 24 News, 18 January 2018, NEWS,weblink Ireland labelled a tax "black hole", 19 January 2018, “Obviously many countries in the European Union are places where aggressive tax optimisation finds its place,†Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic affairs and taxation, told reporters in Brussels yesterday. “Some European countries are black holes. . . I want to address this.â€, The Sunday Times, On 27 March 2019, RTÉ News reported that the European Parliament had "overwhelmingly accepted" a new report that likened Ireland to a tax haven.WEB,weblink Ireland likened to tax haven in report accepted in European Parliament, RTÉ News, 26 March 2019, 27 March 2019, Ireland has been likened to a tax haven in a new report which was overwhelmingly accepted by the European Parliament.,Hines–Rice 1994 definition{{see also|Tax haven#Tax haven lists|Tax haven#Definitions}}The first major {{slink||Leaders in tax haven research}} was James R. Hines Jr., who in 1994, published a paper with Eric M Rice, listing 41 tax havens, of which Ireland was one of their major 7 tax havens. The 1994 Hines–Rice paper is recognised as the first important paper on tax havens, and is the most cited paper in the history of research on tax havens.WEB,weblink Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, IDEAS/RePEc Database, Tax Havens by Most Cited, The paper has been cited by all subsequent, most cited, research papers on tax havens, by other {{slink||Leaders in tax haven research}}, including Desai,JOURNAL,weblink The Demand for Tax Haven Operations, Mihir A.Desai, C Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr, Journal of Public Economics, 9, 3, 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.04.004, 2006, 513–531, Dharmapala, Slemrod, and Zucman.JOURNAL,weblink The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. net Debtors or net Creditors?, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128, 3, 1321–1364, August 2013, Gabriel Zucman, 10.1093/qje/qjt012, 10.1.1.371.3828, Gabriel Zucman, Hines expanded his original 1994 list to 45 countries in 2007, and to 52 countries in the Hines 2010 list, and used quantitative techniques to estimate that Ireland was the third largest global tax haven. Other major papers on tax havens by Dharmapala (2008, 2009), and Zucman (2015, 2018), cite the 1994 Hines–Rice paper, but create their own tax haven lists, all of which include Ireland (e.g., the June 2018, Zucman–Tørsløv–Wier 2018 list).The 1994 Hines–Rice paper was one of the first to use the term "profit shifting".WEB,weblink What Do We Know About Base Erosion and Profit Shifting? A Review of the Empirical Literature, University of Chicago, Dhammika Dharmapala, 2014, It focuses particularly on the dominant approach within the economics literature on income shifting, which dates back to Hines and Rice (1994) and which we refer to as the "Hines–Rice" approach., 1, Dhammika Dharmapala, Hines–Rice also introduced the first quantitative tests of a tax haven, which Hines felt were needed as many tax havens had non-trivial "headline" tax rates.JOURNAL,weblink Firms, Trade and Profit Shifting: Evidence from Aggregate Data, Sébastien Laffitte, Farid Toubal, CESifo Economic Studies, July 2018, Concerning the characterization of tax havens, we follow the definition proposed by Hines and Rice (1994) which has been recently used by Dharmapala and Hines (2009). A tax haven is defined as a location with low corporate tax rates, banking and business secrecy, advance communication facilities and self-promotion as an offshore financial centre (Hines and Rice, 1994, Appendix 1 p. 175), 8, These two tests are still the most widely quoted proxy tests for tax havens in the academic literature. The first test, extreme distortion of national accounts by BEPS accounting flows, was used by the IMF in June 2000 when defining offshore financial centres ("OFCs"), a term the IMF used to capture both traditional tax havens and emerging modern corporate tax havens:{{ordered list|type=lower-roman | BEPS flows inflate the haven's GDP; proxies are Corporate haven#GDP-per-capita tax haven proxy>GDP-per-capita (Ireland is 3rd), and deviation of GDP/GNI from 1 (Ireland is now 1st).HTTP://ECONOMIC-INCENTIVES.BLOGSPOT.IE/2013/04/GDP-AND-INTERNATIONAL-COMPARISONS.HTML >TITLE=INTERNATIONAL GNI TO GDP COMPARISONS | AUTHOR-LINK=SEAMUS COFFEY | DATE=29 APRIL 2013, | Gabriel Zucman's 2018 findings that Ireland is the largest BEPS hub in the world, Zucman immediately tweeted back a chart showing that Irish-based U.S. corporates were the most profitable in the world.HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/GABRIEL_ZUCMAN/STATUS/1006920795807887360 | TITLE="IRELAND IS NOT A TAX HAVEN"... | AUTHOR-LINK=GABRIEL ZUCMAN, Wikipedia:SPS | [self-published]}}}}The Hines–Rice paper showed that low foreign tax rates [from tax havens] ultimately enhance U.S. tax collections.NEWS,weblink Tax havens benefits spelt out, The Financial Times, 4 November 2009, The study said "a large body of economic research over the last 15 years" contradicted the popular view that offshore centres erode tax collections, divert economic activity and otherwise burden nearby high-tax countries., Hines' insight that the U.S. is the largest beneficiary from tax havens was confirmed by others,JOURNAL, Using Financial Accounting Data to Examine the Effect of Foreign Operations Located in Tax Havens and Other Countries on U.S. Multinational Firms' Tax Rates, Scott Dyreng, Bradley P. Lindsey, 12 October 2009, Finally, we find that U.S. firms with operations in some tax haven countries have higher federal tax rates on foreign income than other firms. This result suggests that in some cases, tax haven operations may increase U.S. tax collections at the expense of foreign country tax collections., Journal of Accounting Research, 47, 5, 1283–1316, 10.1111/j.1475-679X.2009.00346.x, free, and dictated U.S. policy towards tax havens, including the 1996 "check-the-box"{{efn|name="check"|Before 1996, the United States, like other high-income countries, had anti-avoidance rules—known as “controlled foreign corporations†provisions—designed to immediately tax in the United States some foreign income (such as royalties and interest) conducive of profit shifting. In 1996, the IRS issued regulations that enabled U.S. multinationals to avoid some of these rules by electing to treat their foreign subsidiaries as if they were not corporations but disregarded entities for tax purposes. This move is called “checking the box†because that is allthat needs to be done on IRS form 8832 to make it work and use Irish BEPS tools on non–U.S. revenues was a compromise to keep U.S. multinationals from leaving the U.S. (page 10.)}} rules, and U.S. hostility to OECD attempts in curbing Ireland's BEPS tools.{{efn|The U.S. refused to sign the OECD BEPS Multilateral Instrument ("MLI") on the 24 November 2016.}} Under the 2017 U.S. TCJA, U.S. multinationals paid a 15.5% repatriation tax on the circa $1 trillion in untaxed cash built up in global tax havens from 2004 to 2017.{{efn|2004 was the date of the last tax U.S. corporate tax amnesty where a repatriation tax of 5% was levied on offshore untaxed profits}} Had these U.S. multinationals paid foreign taxes, they would have built up sufficient foreign tax credits to avoid paying U.S. taxes. By allowing U.S. multinationals to use global tax havens, the U.S. exchequer received more taxes, at the expense of other countries, as Hines predicted in 1994.Several of Hines' papers on tax havens, including the calculations of the Hines–Rice 1994 paper, were used in the final report by the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisors that justified the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the largest U.S. tax reform in a generation.WEB,weblink TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT OF 2017 Corporate Tax Reform and Wages: Theory and Evidence, [In the Whitehouse advocating for the TCJA] Applying Hines and Rice’s (1994) findings to a statutory corporate rate reduction of 15 percentage points (from 35 to 20 percent) suggests that reduced profit shifting would result in more than $140 billion of repatriated profit based on 2016 numbers., NARA, National Archives, whitehouse.gov, 17 October 2017, The Irish State dismisses academic studies which list Ireland as a tax haven as being "out-of-date", because they cite the 1994 Hines–Rice paper.WEB,weblink 'Ireland is not a tax haven': Department of Finance dismisses 'tax haven' research finding, [According to the Department of Finance] The Zucman paper says it used an old 1993 list of "havens" drawn up by U.S. tax academics, James Hines and Eric Rice, and added the Netherlands and Belgium, thejournal.ie, 13 June 2018, NEWS,weblink Irish tax haven label 'wrong', A research paper naming Ireland as the "world's biggest tax haven" was flawed as it used data more than 20 years old — but the perception could be harmful to the country's reputation, a leading economist has said., Irish Examiner, 14 June 2018, The Irish State ignores the fact that both Hines, and all the other academics, developed new lists; or that the Hines–Rice 1994 paper is still considered correct (e.g. per the 2017 U.S. TCJA legislation). In 2013, the Department of Finance (Ireland) co-wrote a paper with the Irish Revenue Commissioners, which they had published in the State-sponsored ESRI Quarterly, which found the only sources listing Ireland as a tax haven were:{{efn|This paper made several incorrect assertions, including that there had been no development since the original Hines–Rice list of 41 tax havens, and that all subsequent academic papers on tax havens had simply repeated the original Hines–Rice list}}{{ordered list|type=lower-roman | |Effective tax rates}}) | International Financial Services Centre, Dublin>International Financial Services Centre in attracting investment to Ireland" (this is effectively also linked to {{slink | Effective tax rates}});|"Third, because of a rather obscure, but nonetheless influential paper by Hines and Rice dating back to 1994."}}This 2013 Irish State-written paper then invoked the {{slink||OECD 1998 definition}} of a tax haven, four years younger than Hines–Rice, and since discredited, to show that Ireland was not a tax haven.The following is from a June 2018 Irish Independent article by the CEO of the key trade body that represents all U.S. multinationals in Ireland on the 1994 Hines–Rice paper:{{blockquote|However, it looks like the 'tax haven' narrative will always be with us – and typically that narrative is based on studies and data of 20 to 30 years' vintage or even older. It's a bit like calling out Ireland today for being homophobic because up to 1993 same-sex activity was criminalised and ignoring the joyous day in May 2015 when Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce marriage equality by popular vote.|author=Mark Redmond, President American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, 21 June 2018NEWS,weblink American Chamber of Commerce hires Mark Redmond, past President of the Irish Tax Institute as its new CEO, Irish Times, 25 November 2013, }}Unique talent base{{see also|Global Competitiveness Report}}File:Long Room Interior, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland - Diliff.jpg|thumb|Long Room, Trinity College DublinTrinity College DublinIn a less technical manner to the rebuttals by the Irish State, the labels have also drawn responses from leaders in the Irish business community who attribute the value of U.S. investment in Ireland to Ireland's unique talent base. At €334 billion, the value of U.S. investment in Ireland is larger than Ireland's 2016 GDP of €291 billion (or 2016 GNI* of €190 billion), and larger than total aggregate U.S. investment into all BRIC countries.NEWS,weblink AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN IRELAND: Denouncing Ireland as a tax haven is as dated as calling it homophobic because of our past, writes Mark Redmond, Irish Independent, 21 June 2018, The total value of U.S. business investment in Ireland – ranging from data centres to the world's most advanced manufacturing facilities – stands at $387bn (€334bn) – this is more than the combined U.S. investment in South America, Africa and the Middle East, and more than the BRIC countries combined., This unique talent base is also noted by IDA Ireland, the State body responsible for attracting inward investment, but never defined beyond the broad concept.NEWS,weblink IDA IRELAND CEO Shanahan: 'We don't have natural resources other than the quality of our people', Shanahan is part politician, part diplomat, and part salesman., Irish Independent, 10 March 2016, File:Belfield Arts Block 1445w.jpg|thumb| Arts Block, University College DublinUniversity College DublinIrish education does not appear to be distinctive.WEB,weblink FactCheck: Does Ireland really have the "highest education" in Europe?, Eoghan Murphy's claim was that Ireland had "the highest education in Europe". Taking this to mean "best", it's clear that this is a vast exaggeration of the reality, according to most key measures. We rate the claim FALSE., thejournal.ie, 26 September 2016, Ireland has a high % of third-level graduates, but this is because it re-classified many technical colleges into degree-issuing institutions in 2005–08. This is believed to have contributed to the decline of its leading universities, of which there are two in the top 200 (i.e. a quality over quantity issue).NEWS,weblink Irish universities tumble down latest set of world rankings: Call for Government to tackle funding crisis as TCD loses status as only top-100 Irish university, Irish Times, 6 June 2018, NEWS,weblink Abolition of institutes of technology is an act of senseless violence: Technological Universities Bill will take the educational engine out of the regions, Irish Times, 29 January 2018, NEWS,weblink Technological universities: are they really such a good idea ?, Irish Times, 15 March 2016, Ireland continues to pursue this strategy and is considering re-classifying the remaining Irish technical institutes as universities for 2019.NEWS,weblink New technological university for greater Dublin area to be announced, Irish Times, 16 July 2018, Ireland shows no apparent distinctiveness in any non-tax related metrics of business competitiveness including cost of living,NEWS,weblink Dublin most expensive place for expats to live in eurozone: Soaring rents cause Irish capital to overtake Paris in Mercer's annual cost of living survey, Irish Times, 26 June 2018, NEWS,weblink Dublin overtakes London in most expensive cities to live in, Dublin has overtaken London in a worldwide cost of living rankings because of the Brexit–induced weakening of sterling., Irish Independent, 15 March 2018, NEWS,weblink Tight property supply constrains Dublin's Brexit appeal: Escalating prices and rents prompt anxiety about ability to draw more business, Financial Times, 31 January 2018, league tables of favoured EU FDI locations,NEWS,weblink Ireland falls in FDI ranking as Paris gains to London's cost, Irish Independent, Ireland fell out of a top 10 ranking of the most attractive European destinations for foreign direct investment (FDI) last year, slipping to 11th place overall after being overtaken by Finland., 12 June 2018, league tables of favoured EU destinations for London-based financials post-Brexit (which are linked to quality of talent),WEB,weblink Frankfurt Is the Big Winner in Battle for Brexit Bankers, Bloomberg News, Gavin Finch, Hayley Warren, Will Hadfield, Frankfurt has emerged as the biggest winner in the fight for thousands of London-based jobs that will have to be relocated to new hubs inside the European Union after Brexit., 27 March 2018, 29 April 2019, and the key World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report rankings.NEWS,weblink Ireland slips again in the latest WEF Global Competitiveness Report rankings, Irish Independent, The gauge from the World Economic Forum ranks the "inadequate supply of infrastructure" as the greatest problem for businesses in Ireland, followed closely by tax rates and "inefficient government bureaucracy"., 28 September 2017, {{blockquote|Without its low-tax regime, Ireland will find it hard to sustain economic momentum|author=Ashoka Mody, Ex–IMF mission chief to Ireland, "Warning Ireland faces economic threat over corporate tax reliance – Troika chief", 9 June 2018.NEWS,weblink Warning that Ireland faces huge economic threat over corporate tax reliance – Troika chief, Irish Independent, 9 June 2018, }}{{anchor|Employment Tax BEPS system}}Irish commentators provide a perspective on Ireland's "talent base". The State applies an "employment tax"{{efn|name="employment"|Under Section 291A of the 1997 Irish Tax and Consolidated Acts, users of Irish BEPS tools must conduct a "relevant trade" and perform "relevant activities" in Ireland to give the BEPS tool a degree of credibility and substance.WEB,weblink Capital allowances for intangible assets, Irish Revenue, 15 September 2017, WEB, Intangible Assets Scheme under Section 291A Taxes Consolidation Act 1997,weblink Irish Revenue, 2010, WEB,weblink Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets under section 291A of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (Part 9 / Chapter2), Irish Revenue, February 2018, In effect, it can equate to an "employment tax" on the Irish subsidiary, however, to the extent that the "relevant activities" are needed within the Group (e.g. they are performing real tasks), then the effect of this "employment tax" is mitigated. While the Irish State has never published the employment metrics for using Irish BEPS tools, the evidence is that even where the "relevant activities" were completely unnecessary, the "employment tax" equates to circa 2–3% of revenues (see here).}} to U.S. multinationals using Irish BEPs tools. To fulfil their Irish employment quotas, some U.S. technology firms perform low-grade localisation functions in Ireland which requires foreign employees speaking global languages (while many U.S. multinationals perform higher-value software engineering functions in Ireland, some do notNEWS,weblink Google UK employees paid double their Irish equivalent, Irish Times, February 2016, ). These employees must be sourced internationally. This is facilitated via a loose Irish work-visa programme.NEWS,weblink Trump visas and Brexit provide tailwinds, Irish Independent, July 2018, This Irish "employment tax" requirement for use of BEPS tools, and its fulfilment via foreign work-visas, is a driver of Dublin's housing crisis.NEWS,weblink Is Ireland's booming economy just an illusion, Irish Times, 30 March 2018, This is consistent with a bias to property development-led economic growth, favoured by the main Irish political parties (see Abuse of QIAIFs).NEWS,weblink How bankers brought Ireland to its knees, The Financial Times, 15 May 2010,Global "knowledge hub" for "selling into Europe"{{see also|Double Irish arrangement#Effect of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act}}File:EUROSTAT Ireland Gross Operating Surplus by Controlling Country, €million 2015.png|thumb|Only U.S. multinationals use Ireland: Irish corporate gross operating surplus by the controlling country of the company (note: a material part of the Irish figure are from U.S. tax inversiontax inversionFile:Where do U.S. multinationals book their profits (2016 BEA).png|upright=1.35|thumb|U.S. multinationals book over half of their non–U.S. profits in tax havens by using BEPS tools (2016 BEA).]]In another less technical rebuttal, the State explains Ireland's high ranking in the established "proxy tests" for tax havens as a by–product of Ireland's position as preferred hub for global "knowledge economy" multinationals (e.g. technology and life sciences), "selling into EU–28 markets".NEWS,weblink Ireland is not – and has never been – a tax haven, Irish Times, American Chamber of Commerce (Ireland), 30 May 2013, When the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) suppressed its 2016–2017 data release to protect Apple's Q1 2015 BEPS action, it released a paper on "meeting the challenges of a modern globalised knowledge economy".WEB,weblink Challenges of Measuring the Modern Global Knowledge Economy, Central Statistics Office (Ireland), 2017, Ireland has no foreign corporates that are non–U.S./non–UK in its top 50 companies by revenue, and only one by employees (German Lidl, which sells into Ireland).NEWS,weblink Ireland's Top 1000 Companies, Irish Times, 2018, The UK multinationals in Ireland are either selling into Ireland (e.g. Tesco), or date pre–2009, after which the UK overhauled its tax system to a "territorial tax" model. Since 2009, the U.K has become a major tax haven (see U.K. transformation).WEB,weblink How Tax Reform solved UK inversions, Tax Foundation, 14 October 2014, William McBride, 29 April 2019, WEB,weblink The United Kingdom's Experience with Inversions, Tax Foundation, Kyle Pomerleau, 5 April 2016, 29 April 2019, Since this transformation, no major UK firms have moved to Ireland and most UK corporate tax inversions to Ireland returned;WEB,weblink The inversion experience in the US and the UK, HM Revenue and Customs, Mike Williams (HMRC Director of International Tax), 23 January 2015, In 2007 to 2009, WPP, United Business Media, Henderson Group, Shire, Informa, Regus, Charter and Brit Insurance all left the UK. By 2015, WPP, UBM, Henderson Group, Informa and Brit Insurance have all returned, although Ireland has succeeded in attracting some financial services firms affected by Brexit.NEWS,weblink Dublin is Top Brexit Relocation Spot for Finance Firms, EY Finds, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg, New York City, 2021-03-21, NEWS,weblink Dublin secures a Brexit win as City of London hit worse than expected, Irish Examiner, Cork, 2021-04-16, In 2016, U.S. corporate tax expert, James R. Hines Jr., showed multinationals from "territorial" corporate taxation systems don't need tax havens, when researching behaviours of German multinationals with German academic tax experts.JOURNAL,weblink Multinational Firms and Tax Havens, James R. Hines Jr., Anna Gumpert, Monika Schnitzer, 2016, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 714, Germany taxes only 5% of the active foreign business profits of its resident corporations. [..] Furthermore, German firms do not have incentives to structure their foreign operations in ways that avoid repatriating income. Therefore, the tax incentives for German firms to establish tax haven affiliates are likely to differ from those of U.S. firms and bear strong similarities to those of other G–7 and OECD firms., 98, 4, James R. Hines Jr, U.S.–controlled multinationals constitute 25 of the top 50 Irish firms (including tax inversions), and 70% of top 50 revenue (see Table 1). U.S.–controlled multinations pay 80% of Irish corporate taxes (see "low tax economy"). Irish–based U.S. multinationals may be selling into Europe, however, the evidence is that they route all non–U.S. business through Ireland.{{efn|name="globalrev"|The U.S. multinational use of Irish BEPS schemes such as the Double Irish are sometimes mis-understood as being only used for EU–sourced revenues. For example, in 2016, Facebook recorded global revenues of $27 billion, while Facebook in Ireland paid €30 million in Irish tax on Irish revenues of €13 billion (approximately half of all global revenues).NEWS,weblink Facebook paid just €30m tax in Ireland despite earning €12bn, Irish Independent, Weckler, Adrian, 29 November 2017, Similarly, when the EU introduced the GDPR regulations in 2018, Facebook disclosed that all of its non–U.S. accounts (circa 1.9 billion, of which 1.5 billion were non–E.U), were legally based in Dublin.NEWS,weblink Exclusive: Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy law, Reuters, Ingram, David, 18 April 2018, Similarly, Google is also believed to run most of its non–U.S. sales revenue and profits through its Dublin operation.NEWS,weblink Google pays €47m in tax in Ireland on €22bn sales revenue, The Guardian, Bowers, Simon, 4 November 2016, WEB,weblink Google booked 41% of global revenues in Ireland in 2012; A leprechaun's gold?, Finfacts.ie, 30 September 2013, }}NEWS,weblink Facebook to put 1.5bn users out of reach of new EU GDPR privacy law, Irish Times, 19 April 2018, Ireland is more accurately described as a "U.S. corporate tax haven".WEB,weblink U.S. firms are keeping billions in offshore 'tax havens' – and Ireland is high on the list, thejournal.ie, 15 October 2016, The U.S. multinationals in Ireland are from "knowledge industries" (see Table 1). This is because Ireland's BEPS tools (e.g. the double Irish, the single malt and the capital allowances for intangible assets) require intellectual property ("IP") to execute the BEPS actions, which technology and life sciences possess in quantity (see IP–Based BEPS tools).BOOK,weblink WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2017, April 2018, 9789280529142, World Intellectual Property Organization, {{blockquote|Intellectual property (IP) has become the leading tax-avoidance vehicle.|author=UCLA Law Review, "Intellectual Property Law Solutions to Tax Avoidance", (2015)JOURNAL,weblink 4, Intellectual Property Law Solutions to Tax Avoidance, UCLA Law Review, 62, 2, 2015, Andrew Blair-Stanek, Intellectual property (IP) has become the leading tax avoidance vehicle in the world today., }}Rather than a "global knowledge hub" for "selling into Europe", it might be suggested that Ireland is a base for U.S. multinationals with sufficient IP to use Ireland's BEPS tools to shield non–U.S. revenues from U.S. taxation.NEWS,weblink Half of U.S. foreign profits booked in tax havens, especially Ireland: NBER paper, The Japan Times, “Ireland solidifies its position as the #1 tax haven,†Zucman said on Twitter. “U.S. firms book more profits in Ireland than in China, Japan, Germany, France & Mexico combined. Irish tax rate is 5.7%.â€, 10 September 2018, 11 September 2018, 11 September 2018,weblink dead, {{blockquote| No other non-haven OECD country records as high a share of foreign profits booked in tax havens{{efn|The paper lists tax havens as: Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, Bermuda and Caribbean havens (page 6.)}} as the United States. [...] This suggests that half of all the global profits shifted to tax havensare shifted by U.S. multinationals. By contrast, about 25% accrues to E.U. countries, 10% to the rest of the OECD, and 15% to developing countries (Tørsløv et al., 2018).|source=Gabriel Zucman, Thomas Wright, "THE EXORBITANT TAX PRIVILEGE", NBER Working Papers (September 2018).}}In 2018, the U.S. converted into a hybrid "territorial" tax system (the U.S. was one of the last remaining pure "worldwide" tax systems). Post this conversion, U.S. effective tax rates for IP–heavy U.S. multinationals are very similar to the effective tax rates they would incur if legally headquartered in Ireland, even net of full Irish BEPS tools like the double Irish. This represents a substantive challenge to the Irish economy (see effect of U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act).NEWS, U.S. corporations could be saying goodbye to Ireland,weblink Irish Times, 17 January 2018, NEWS,weblink Trump's U.S. tax reform a significant challenge for Ireland, Irish Times, 30 November 2017, However, {{slink||Technical issues with TCJA}} mean some Irish BEPS tools, such as Apple's {{slink||Green Jersey}}, have been enhanced.Ireland's recent expansion into traditional tax haven services (e.g. Cayman Island and Luxembourg type ICAVs and L–QIAIFs) is a diversifier from U.S. corporate tax haven services.NEWS, Ireland enjoys tax boom but fears a reckoning: Dublin concerned about reliance on revenue from small group of multinational companies,weblink Financial Times, Beesley, Authur, 31 January 2018, Brexit was initially disappointing for Ireland in the area of attracting financial services firms from London, but the situation later improved. Brexit has led to growth in UK centric tax-law firms (including offshore magic circle firms), setting up offices in Ireland to handle traditional tax haven services for clients.MAGAZINE, Dublin analysis: Disrupting the status quo: Driven by a fast-growing economy and the aftermath of Brexit, the Irish legal market has entered a new phase of internationalisation.,weblink The Lawyer, 3 May 2018,Countermeasures{{anchor|Political compromises}}BackgroundApparent contradictionsWhile Ireland's development into traditional tax haven tools (e.g. ICAVs and L–QIAIFs) is more recent, Ireland's status as a corporate tax haven has been noted since 1994 (the first Hines–Rice tax haven paper), and discussed in the U.S. Congress for a decade. A lack of progress, and delays, in addressing Ireland's corporate tax BEPS tools is apparent: | BEPS tool, the double Irish, attributed to creating the largest build-up in untaxed cash in history, was documented in 2004.HTTPS://WWW.MCKINSEY.COM/BUSINESS-FUNCTIONS/STRATEGY-AND-CORPORATE-FINANCE/OUR-INSIGHTS/THE-REAL-STORY-BEHIND-US-COMPANIES-OFF-SHORE-CASH-RESERVES | PUBLISHER=MCKINSEY & COMPANY | double Irish BEPS tool in October 2014;HTTPS://WWW.FT.COM/CONTENT/BA95CFF0-4FCD-11E4-A0A4-00144FEAB7DE | NEWSPAPER=THE FINANCIAL TIMES | AUTHOR1=ALEX BARKER | AUTHOR3=VANESSA HOULDER | NEWSPAPER=THE GUARDIAN, October 2014, | double Irish tool, the Double Irish arrangement#Replacement by Single Malt>single malt, was already up and running in 2014 (and used by Microsoft and Allergan in 2017),DEATH OF THE "DOUBLE IRISH DUTCH SANDWICH"? NOT SO FAST.>URL = HTTPS://WWW.TAXESWITHOUTBORDERSBLOG.COM/2014/10/DEATH-OF-THE-DOUBLE-IRISH-DUTCH-SANDWICH-NOT-SO-FAST/ | DATE = 23 OCTOBER 2014 | ARCHIVE-DATE = 22 MARCH 2018 | URL-STATUS = DEAD, MULTINATIONALS REPLACING 'DOUBLE IRISH' WITH NEW TAX AVOIDANCE SCHEME>URL = HTTPS://WWW.INDEPENDENT.IE/BUSINESS/IRISH/NEW-LOOPHOLE-TO-REPLACE-THE-DOUBLE-IRISH-TAX-STRATEGY-30728951.HTML | DATE=9 NOVEMBER 2014, and has as yet not received any US–EU–OECD attention. It is noted that since the closure of the double Irish in 2015, the use of Irish BEPS tools increased materially;3>TITLE=IMPOSSIBLE STRUCTURES: TAX OUTCOMES OVERLOOKED BY THE 2015 TAX SPILLOVER ANALYSIS | PUBLISHER=CHRISTIAN AID | QUOTE=FIGURES RELEASED IN APRIL 2017 SHOW THAT SINCE 2015 THERE HAS BEEN A DRAMATIC INCREASE IN COMPANIES USING IRELAND AS A LOW-TAX OR NO-TAX JURISDICTION FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (IP) AND THE INCOME ACCRUING TO IT, VIA A NEARLY 1000% INCREASE IN THE UPTAKE OF A TAX BREAK EXPANDED BETWEEN 2014 AND 2017 | ARCHIVE-DATE=22 MARCH 2018 | URL-STATUS=DEAD, THREE YEARS OF SILENCE ON 'SINGLE MALT' TAX LOOPHOLE RAISES QUESTIONS>URL = HTTPS://WWW.IRISHTIMES.COM/BUSINESS/ECONOMY/THREE-YEARS-OF-SILENCE-ON-SINGLE-MALT-TAX-LOOPHOLE-RAISES-QUESTIONS-1.3293313?MODE=SAMPLE&AUTH-FAILED=1&PW-ORIGIN=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FWWW.IRISHTIMES.COM%2FBUSINESS%2FECONOMY%2FTHREE-YEARS-OF-SILENCE-ON-SINGLE-MALT-TAX-LOOPHOLE-RAISES-QUESTIONS-1.3293313 | DATE=16 NOVEMBER 2017, | BEPS activities,BEPS PROJECT BACKGROUND BRIEF | QUOTE=WITH A CONSERVATIVELY ESTIMATED ANNUAL REVENUE LOSS OF USD 100 TO 240 BILLION, THE STAKES ARE HIGH FOR GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD. | DATE=JANUARY 2017, has made no comment on Apple's Q1 2015 USD 300 billion Irish BEPS transaction, the largest BEPS transaction in history (labelled "leprechaun economics" by Nobel Prize economist, Paul Krugman), with Ireland's expanded Double Irish arrangement#Backstop of capital allowances | ("CAIA") BEPS tool (the "#Green Jersey>Green Jersey"); | United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations>PSI, however, it came to Apple's defense when the EU Commission levied a EU illegal State aid case against Apple in Ireland | , the largest corporate tax fine in history, arguing that Apple paying the full 12.5% Irish corporate tax rate would harm the U.S. exchequer;U.S. ACCUSES EU OF GRABBING TAX REVENUES WITH APPLE DECISION | WORK=REUTERS, 31 August 2016, | country-by-country reporting ("CbCr") which would effectively end EU tax havens,HTTPS://WWW.TAXJUSTICE.NET/2018/07/13/WHY-IS-GERMANY-SIDING-WITH-THE-TAX-HAVENS-AGAINST-CORPORATE-TRANSPARENCY/ | DATE=13 JULY 2018 | TAX JUSTICE NETWORK>AUTHOR=MARKUS MEINZER, and the German administration neutralised its own Parliament's 2018 "Royalty Barrier" by exempting all OECD–approved IP–schemes (i.e. all of Ireland's BEPS tools), see | Corporate haven#German "Royalty Barrier" failure | ;HTTP://WWW.MONDAQ.COM/GERMANY/X/644192/TAX+AUTHORITIES/BREAKING+DOWN+THE+GERMAN+ROYALTY+BARRIER+A+VIEW+FROM+IRELAND | PUBLISHER=MATHESON (LAW FIRM), 8 November 2017, | Gabriel Zucman, showed in 2018 that most corporate tax disputes are between high-tax jurisdictions, and not between high-tax and low-tax corporate tax haven jurisdictions. In fact, Zucman's (et alia) analysis shows that disputes with the major corporate tax havens of Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, are rare.THE POLICY FAILURE OF HIGH-TAX COUNTRIES | URL=HTTP://GABRIEL-ZUCMAN.EU/FILES/TWZ2018SLIDES.PDF | NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, WORKING PAPERS>AUTHOR1=GABRIEL ZUCMAN | AUTHOR3=LUDVIG WIER | AUTHOR1-LINK=GABRIEL ZUCMAN, Global Tax PlansWhile Ireland has been considered a tax haven by many for decades now, the global tax system that Ireland depends on to incentivize multinational corporations to move there is receiving an overhaul by a coalition of 130 nations. Previously this global tax system did not do much to limit tax dodging by multinational firms, with Ireland’s official corporate tax rate until this rework being at a mere 12.5% alongside a tax regime meant to help global companies based there avoid paying taxes to other countries where they make profits.NEWS,weblink Ireland's Days as a Tax Haven May be Ending, but Not Without a Fight, The New York Times, 8 July 2021, Alderman, Liz, Originally Ireland was one of the few countries (one out of nine) to oppose the sign on for reform to a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and to force technology and retail companies to pay taxes based on where their goods and services were sold, rather than where the company was located. There was obvious hesitation for Irish officials to raise their tax rates while they enjoyed their status of being a tax haven and attracted the business multinational corporations throughout the world, the Irish government would eventually agree to the terms of the deal after some time and debate. As of October 7, 2021 Ireland dropped its opposition too an overhaul of global corporate tax rules giving up its 12.5% tax rate.NEWS,weblink Ireland agrees to global tax deal, sacrificing prized low rate, Reuters, 7 October 2021, Halpin, Padraic, Humphries, Conor, The Irish Cabinet approved an increase from 12.5% to 15% in corporation tax for companies with turnover in excess of 750 million euros.WEB,weblink Global tax deal inches closer as holdout Ireland agrees to sign up, CNBC, 7 October 2021, Additionally, the Irish Department of Finance has estimated that joining this global deal would reduce the country’s tax take by 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) a year, according to RTE. The other countries as part of this deal did have to agree to compromise on a few key issues involved in the reform, dropping the “at least†in the statement “minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%†updating it to just 15% — signaling that the rate would not be pushed up at a later date. Ireland was also given assurances that it could keep the lower rate for smaller firms located in the country.}}Source of contradictionsTax haven experts explain these contradictions as resulting from the different agendas of the major OECD taxing authorities, and particularly the U.S., and Germany, who while not themselves considered tax havens or corporate tax havens, rank #2 and #7 respectively in the 2018 Financial Secrecy Index of tax secrecy jurisdictions:WEB,weblink National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Papers, Why high-tax locations let tax havens flourish, November 2017, Gabriel Zucman, Thomas Tørsløv, Ludvig Wier, Gabriel Zucman, BOOK, Tax havens: How Globalization Really Works,weblink Cornell University Press, Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy (tax campaigner), Richard Murphy, Christian Chavagneux, 1 July 2011, 978-0801476129, Ronen Palan, JOURNAL,weblinkweblink dead, 2018-08-29, In praise of tax havens: International tax planning and foreign direct investment, European Economic Review, 54, 1, 82–95, January 2010, Qing Hong, Michael Smart, 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2009.06.006, 37028316, WEB,weblink Reform of U.S. International Taxation: Alternatives, Congressional Research Service, Jane G. Gravelle, 1 August 2017, {{ordered list|type=lower-roman | Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("TCJA"), the U.S. had one of the highest global rates of corporation tax at 35%.HTTPS://TAXFOUNDATION.ORG/US-HAS-HIGHEST-CORPORATE-INCOME-TAX-RATE-OECD/ | PUBLISHER=TAX FOUNDATION | Entity classification election>check-the-box"{{efn | WORK=REUTERS | aggregate worldwide tax rates of U.S. multinationals is far lower than 35%. This compromise was not unanimously supported in Washington and some U.S. multinationals still inverted to Ireland. Tax academics have labelled Washington's concession to U.S. multinationals as the exorbitant tax privilege (and link it to the wider economic concept of Exorbitant privilege>U.S. exorbitant privilege).HTTP://GABRIEL-ZUCMAN.EU/FILES/WRIGHTZUCMAN2018.PDF>TITLE=THE EXORBITANT TAX PRIVILEGE | NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH>AUTHOR1=GABRIEL ZUCMAN | AUTHOR2=THOMAS WRIGHT | AUTHOR1-LINK=GABRIEL ZUCMAN, | not to use tax havens, then U.S. multinationals would be forced to pay higher taxes in the global jurisdictions in which they operate. As first shown in the James R. Hines Jr.#Hines-Rice paper>1994 Hines–Rice paper, the U.S. has long been aware that by allowing U.S. multinationals to use BEPS tools from global corporate tax havens, increases the ultimate taxes received by the U.S. exchequer.HTTPS://REPOSITORY.LAW.UMICH.EDU/CGI/VIEWCONTENT.CGI?REFERER=HTTPS://WWW.GOOGLE.IE/&HTTPSREDIR=1&ARTICLE=1716&CONTEXT=ARTICLES>TITLE=TREASURE ISLANDS | AUTHOR=JAMES R. HINES JR. | JOURNAL=JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES | ISSUE=24 | AUTHOR-LINK=JAMES R. HINES JR, The 2017 TCJA U.S. repatriation tax of 15.5% would not have been payable had U.S. multinationals been paying full foreign taxes on their non–U.S. income.HTTPS://WWW.RTE.IE/NEWS/BUSINESS-ANALYSIS/2018/0911/993136-HOW-THE-US-CORPORATION-TAX-REGIME-HELPS-US-BUSINESS-COMPETE/>TITLE=HOW THE U.S. CORPORATION TAX REGIME HELPS U.S. BUSINESS COMPETE AGAINST THE REST OF THE WORLD | PUBLISHER=RTÉ NEWS | FIRST=SEAN, That is certainly one of the conclusions of a new working paper [by Gabriel Zucman et alia] on the U.S. corporation tax regime, and how it helps U.S. business compete against the rest of the world. In short, the authors believe that profit-shifting facilitated by the U.S. tax code has given U.S. companies a huge competitive advantage over foreign rivals – to the benefit of shareholders in those multinationals, | NEWSPAPER=IRISH TIMES | DATE=6 JULY 2018 | AUTHOR-LINK=JOHN D. FITZGERALD, Tax haven expert, James R. Hines Jr., saw this when researching why German multinationals make so little use of tax havens in 2016.|EU Perspective II. A second noted EU perspective is that if U.S. multinationals need Ireland as a BEPS hub because the pre–TCJA U.S. "worldwide" tax system did not enable them to charge IP direct from the U.S. (without incurring larger U.S. taxes), then the money Ireland extracts from these U.S. multinationals (e.g. some Irish corporate taxes and Irish salaries), are still a net positive for the aggregate EU–28 economy. Ireland and other so-called "EU tax havens", can extract EU "rents" from U.S. multinationals, which EU multinationals don't have to pay.}}Tax Cuts and Jobs Act{{anchor|Impact of TCJA}}Impact{{see also|Double Irish arrangement#Effect of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act}}File:OECD countries with worldwide tax systems.png|thumb|OECD "worldwide tax" countries.WEB,weblink CORPORATE INVERSIONS: A POLICY PRIMER, 24 October 2016, 21 April 2019, (Wharton University]], 21 April 2019,weblink dead, )Before the passing of the TCJA in December 2017, the U.S. was one of eight remaining jurisdictions to run a "worldwide" taxation system, which was the principal obstacle to U.S. corporate tax reform, as it was not possible to differentiate between the source of income.{{efn|name="worldwide"|Before the passing of the TCJA in December 2017, the U.S. was one of eight remaining jurisdictions to run a "worldwide" taxation system, which was the principal obstacle to U.S. corporate tax reform, as it was not possible to differentiate between the source of income. The seven other "worldwide" tax systems, are: Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Mexico, and Poland.WEB,weblink Territorial vs. Worldwide Corporate Taxation: Implications for Developing Countries, IMF, 2013, 4, The positive experience of the UK switch to a "territorial" system in 2009–12, and the Japanese switch to a "territorial" system in 2009,WEB,weblink Japan Disproves Fears of Territorial Taxation, 13 November 2012, Tax Foundation, TF Editorial, amongst others,WEB,weblink A Global Perspective on Territorial Taxation, 10 August 2012, Dittmer, Philip, Case Studies of transitions from "Worldwide" to "Territorial", was continually highlighted by U.S. tax academics.}} The seven other "worldwide" tax systems, are: Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Mexico, and Poland.Tax experts expect the anti-BEPS provisions of the TCJA's new hybrid "territorial" taxation system, the GILTI and BEAT tax regimes, to neutralize some Irish BEPS tools (e.g. the double Irish and the single malt). In addition, the TCJA's FDII tax regime makes U.S.–controlled multinationals indifferent as to whether they charge-out their IP from the U.S. or from Ireland, as net effective tax rates on IP, under the FDII and GILTI regimes, are very similar. Post-TCJA, S&P500 IP–heavy U.S.–controlled multinationals, have guided 2019 tax rates that are similar, whether legally headquartered in Ireland or the U.S.{{efn|name=example2}}WEB,weblink Reassessing the Beloved Double Irish Structure (as Single Malt) in Light of GILTI, DLA Piper and TaxNotes International, Lewis J. Greenwald, Witold Jurewicz, John Wei, 23 April 2018, Tax academic, Mihir A. Desai, in a post-TCJA interview in the Harvard Business Review said that: "So, if you think about a lot of technology companies that are housed in Ireland and have massive operations there, they’re not going to maybe need those in the same way, and those can be relocated back to the U.S.MAGAZINE,weblink Breaking Down the New U.S. Corporate Tax Law, Harvard Business Review, Mihir A. Desai, 26 December 2017, So, if you think about a lot of technology companies that are housed in Ireland and have massive operations there, they’re not going to maybe need those in the same way, and those can be relocated back to the U.S., Mihir A. Desai, It is expected Washington will be less accommodating to U.S. multinationals using Irish BEPS tools and locating IP in tax havens. The EU Commission has also become less tolerant of U.S. multinational use of Irish BEPS tools, as evidenced by the €13 billion fine on Apple for Irish tax avoidance from 2004 to 2014. There is widespread unhappiness of Irish BEPS tools in Europe, even from other tax havens.NEWS,weblink Luxembourg PM blasts Ireland's low effective corporate tax rate, The Irish Examiner, 6 March 2018, {{blockquote|"Now that [U.S.] corporate tax reform has passed, the advantages of being an inverted company are less obvious"|author=Jami Rubin, Managing Director and Head of Life Sciences Research Group, Goldman Sachs (March 2018).WEB,weblink U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Corporate tax reform – Winners and Losers, Athanasiou, Amanda, 1235–1237, The new tax code addresses the historical competitive disadvantage of U.S.–based multinationals in terms of tax rates and international access to capital, and helps level the playing field for U.S. companies, Pfizer CEO Ian Read., Taxnotes International, 19 March 2018, }}{{anchor|Technical issues with TCJA}}Technical issues{{see also|Corporate haven#U.S. as BEPS winner}}While the Washington and EU political compromises tolerating Ireland as a corporate tax haven may be eroding, tax experts point to various technical flaws in the TCJA which, if not resolved, may actually enhance Ireland as a U.S. corporate tax haven:MAGAZINE,weblink Tax Reform: Round One, Harvard Magazine, Mihir A. Desai, June 2018, Mihir A. Desai, WEB,weblink 6 ways to fix the tax system post TCJA, Ben Harris (economist), Brookings Institution, 25 May 2018, Ben Harris (economist), WEB,weblink Gone Fishing, Council on Foreign Relations, Brad Setser, 30 July 2018, [..] most of the profits booked by U.S. firms abroad continue to appear in a few low tax jurisdictions, and well, the resulting data distortions are getting pretty big. I am pretty confident the U.S. tax reform didn't solve the issue of profit-shifting., Brad Setser, NEWS,weblink How U.S. tax reform rewards companies that shift profit to tax havens, Michael Erman, Tom Bergin, Reuters, 18 June 2018, {{ordered list|type=lower-roman | Double Irish arrangement#Backstop of capital allowances>capital allowances for intangible assets scheme (i.e Apple's Green Jersey). With TCJA participation relief, U.S. multinationals can now achieve net effective U.S. tax rates of 0% to 2.5% via this Irish BEPS tool. In June 2018, Microsoft prepared a Green Jersey scheme. | U.S. taxes by $42 ($21 & $21). Google has doubled their Irish hub in 2018.HTTPS://AMP.INDEPENDENT.IE/BUSINESS/COMMERCIAL-PROPERTY/GOOGLE-TO-PAY-OVER-115M-TO-BUY-TREASURY-BUILDING-37154126.HTML | DATE=26 JULY 2018, Irish Independent, |Assessment of GILTI on an aggregate basis rather than a country-by-country basis. Ireland's BEPS schemes generate large tax reliefs that net down the aggregate global income eligible for GILTI assessment, thus reducing TCJA's anti-BEPS protections, and making Ireland's BEPS tools a key part of U.S. multinational post-TCJA tax planning.}}A June 2018 IMF country report on Ireland, while noting the significant exposure of Ireland's economy to U.S. corporates, concluded that the TCJA may not be as effective as Washington expects in addressing Ireland as a U.S. corporate tax haven. In writing its report, the IMF conducted confidential anonymous interviews with Irish corporate tax experts.WEB,weblink IRELAND SELECTED ISSUES Section E: The U.S. Tax Reform, 27–33, IMF, 11 June 2018, Some tax experts, noting Google and Microsoft's actions in 2018, assert these flaws in the TCJA are deliberate, and part of the U.S. Administration's original strategy to reduce aggregate effective global tax rates for U.S. multinationals to circa 10–15% (i.e. 21% on U.S. income, and 2.5% on non–U.S. income, via Irish BEPS tools).NEWS,weblink Donald Trump seeks to slash U.S. corporate tax rate, 27 September 2017, Financial Times, Cutting the official corporate tax rate to 20 per cent from its present 35 per cent — a level that U.S. companies say hurts them in global competition — would leave companies short of the 15 per cent Mr Trump promised as a candidate, There has been an increase in U.S. multinational use of Irish intangible capital allowances, and some tax experts believe that the next few years will see a boom in U.S. multinationals using the Irish "Green Jersey" BEPS tool and on-shoring their IP to Ireland (rather than the U.S.).WEB,weblink When can we expect the next wave of IP onshoring?, IP onshoring is something we should be expecting to see much more of as we move towards the end of the decade. Buckle up!, Seamus Coffey, Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, 18 July 2018, As discussed in {{slink||Hines–Rice 1994 definition}} and {{slink||Source of contradictions}}, the U.S. Treasury's corporation tax policy seeks to maximise long-term U.S. taxes paid by using corporate tax havens to minimise near-term foreign taxes paid. In this regard, it is possible that Ireland still has a long-term future as a U.S. corporate tax haven.{{blockquote|It is undoubtedly true that some American business operations are drawn offshore by the lure of low tax rates in tax havens; nevertheless, the policies of tax havens may, on net, enhance the U.S. Treasury's ability to collect tax revenue from American corporations.|author=James R. Hines Jr. & Eric M Rice|title=Fiscal Paradise: Foreign tax havens and American business, 1994.}}In February 2019, Brad Setser from the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a New York Times article highlighting material issues with TCJA.NEWS,weblink The Global Con Hidden in Trump's Tax Reform Law, Revealed, registration, The New York Times, Brad Setser, Brad Setser, 6 February 2019, 24 February 2019, See also{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
Notes{{notelist}}Sources{{anchor|Leaders in tax haven research}}JournalsThe following are the most cited papers on "tax havens", as ranked on the IDEAS/RePEc database of economic papers, at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.Papers marked with (‡) were also cited by the EU Commission's 2017 summary as the most important research on tax havens.{{legend|#cff|Papers highlighted explicitly label Ireland a tax haven (either by including Ireland in a table of "tax havens", or stating directly that Ireland is a "tax haven").}}{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:left" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dhammika Dharmapala, James R. Hines Jr.>James Hines|2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dhammika Dharmapala, James R. Hines Jr.>James Hines|2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The paper does not explicitly list/reference any country as a tax haven}})|European Economic Review|54 (1) 82–95|Qing Hong, Michael Smart|2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zucman does not explicitly label Ireland a tax haven as he does in other papers}})|American Economic Journal|6 (1) 65–91|Niels Johannesen, Gabriel Zucman|2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Books
(with at least 300 citations on Google Scholar)- BOOK, Cornell University Press, 978-0-8014-7612-9, Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy (tax campaigner), Richard Murphy, Christian Chavagneux, Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works, 2009, Ronen Palan,
- BOOK, Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 978-0-230-10501-0, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, Nicholas Shaxson,
- BOOK,weblink Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion, Congressional Research Service, 2015, Jane G. Gravelle, 978-1482527681, {{rp|6}}
- BOOK, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, Gabriel Zucman, 2016, 978-0226422640, University of Chicago Press, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, Gabriel Zucman,
References
{{Reflist}}External links
- Tax Justice Network: Ireland Section
- OECD Global Forum on Tax Transparency
- Tax Havens: How Globalisation Really Works by Ronen Palen
- Ireland is the world’s biggest corporate ‘tax haven’, say academics, Irish Times (13 June 2018)
- Is Ireland a tax haven? European Parliament says yes, Irish Times (28 March 2019)
- Ireland is a tax haven – and that's becoming controversial at home, Washington Post (25 April 2019)
- content above as imported from Wikipedia
- "Ireland as a tax haven" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 7:35am EDT - Sat, May 18 2024
- "Ireland as a tax haven" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 7:35am EDT - Sat, May 18 2024
[ this remote article is provided by Wikipedia ]
LATEST EDITS [ see all ]
GETWIKI 23 MAY 2022
The Illusion of Choice
Culture
Culture
GETWIKI 09 JUL 2019
Eastern Philosophy
History of Philosophy
History of Philosophy
GETWIKI 09 MAY 2016
GetMeta:About
GetWiki
GetWiki
GETWIKI 18 OCT 2015
M.R.M. Parrott
Biographies
Biographies
GETWIKI 20 AUG 2014
GetMeta:News
GetWiki
GetWiki
CONNECT
© 2024 M.R.M. PARROTT | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED