The FT has reported that: Dublin [has] strongly rejected allegations contained in a US Senate Committee report that it is a tax haven But then every tax haven does that. And they have to do so because the rest of the world thinks they are a tax haven, and it’s the opinion of the rest of the
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Ireland is claiming today that it is not reposnible for Apple paying low rates of tax. Quite emphatically that is not true. Ireland is completely complicit in this low tax rate and in the process is guilty of deliberately undermining the tax revenues of states around the world and of destroying fair competition in international
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As the FT reports this morning: [In Ireland] evictions are expected to rise after the EU, ECB and IMF insisted banks repossess more houses. One in five mortgages in Ireland have serious mortgage arrears. Now in normal times, with buoyant house prices and liquid mortgage markets the solution is to evict, sell the house on,
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Andrew Baker, with whom I have co-authored, had a good piece in the Belfast Telegraph yesterday on the lonely campaign he, I and a few others with ICTU backing have been pursuing to stop a cut in the corporation tax rate in Northern Ireland. As he put it: The sensible reaction to last week’s news that there will be no decision
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For the last 30 months or so I have been arguing against a cut in the corporation tax rate in Northern Ireland to match that in the Irish Republic. The work began with a report I wrote on the issue with the TUC and Irish Congress of Trade Unions – who have been staunch allies in what has otherwise been a fairly solitary
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I have co-written a comment article on Northern Ireland’s corporation tax debate with Andrew Baker, a Reader in Political Economy at Queen’s University, Belfast for the blog of SPERI – The Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute.  I admit I never expected to spend so much time debating tax and Northern Ireland, but have been heavily involved in this debate since writing ‘Pot
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I was amused by the FT’s juxtaposition of a report on some growth in the Irish economy, about which the Irish Development Authority had obviously delivered some puff to the press, with the true underlying cause, which the FT sees as tax abuse. As the FT puts it: Many foreign multinationals operating in Ireland supply goods and services throughout the
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Kenneth Thomas makes a very good point about Apple’s tax accounting. As he has pointed out this morning: Some commenters on my article [on Apple] last month actually cited .. 10-K figures as proof that nothing was amiss. As it turns out, the company’s reporting has other major gaps. Its 2011 10-K Annual Report states that it
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For these who can get through the paywall The Sunday Times and others have an article today on Facebook copying the worst of Google’s tax practices via Ireland, and elsewhere. I contributed to the article. As usual the defence is “we’re complying with the law.” Yes, sure as heck you are. I could suggest other situations
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