WPP has announced that it’s CEO, Martin Sorrell is to have total remuneration of £21 million this year. Of that £18.4 million will be paid in shares for boosting the share price.
What’s the significance? It’s this. Sorrell has been threatening WPP will move to Ireland to exploit its lower tax rates.
Let me explain why. WPP [...]
RTE in Ireland has reported:
Accounts for Microsoft Ireland Research, an Irish subsidiary of the global software giant, show that the company paid just €460,000 in tax, on profits of more than €1.2 billion last year, by using provisions in Irish tax law to take its corporation tax bill down from €158m. Much of Microsoft’s international [...]
The Times has reported that:
United Business Media (UBM) is to join a growing exodus of companies from the UK by shifting its tax base to Ireland, dealing a fresh blow to the Government’s tax policies.
One has to wonder how two is an exodus, but let’s ignore the hype. The company says:
United Business Media plc (”UBM”) [...]
The Irish Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI) has called for a 12.5% corporation tax rate in Northern Ireland to match that in the Republic.
The idea is a complete tax fiddler’s charter, and you can be sure the ICAI knows it. Suddenly we’d have a self contained tax haven inside the UK. UK companies would be [...]
It’s a curious fact that being a tax haven is becoming counter productive.
Ireland is a tax haven. It pioneered ring fences in the Shannon Free Zone, used tax to lure business to its shores and now offers the lowest corporate tax rate amongst the major economies in the EU. But all that it has succeeded [...]
Irish Finance minister Brian Cowen is reported to have told Irish employers:
that is committed to maintaining Ireland’s 12.5pc corporation tax - a key component in the nation’s inward investment success - in the face of EU efforts to introduce tax harmonisation or a minimum rate of corporation tax.
But the story is itself laden with misinformation. [...]
Ken Griffin, one of Ireland’s best journalists, had an article in the Sunday Tribune this weekend looking at the tax affairs of two Adobe companies based in the Republic:
US SOFTWARE company Adobe’s two Irish subsidiaries had a combined turnover of $2.6bn ( 1.83bn) last year yet paid just $5m ( 3.5m) in Irish corporation tax, [...]
The US is targeting the biggest tax havens in the world. The FT reports that:
A pledge by Democrats in Congress to crack down on tax avoidance and to pay for spending measures as they are approved has put the practices of a range of international companies under the spotlight.
“These multinationals avoid US taxation on their [...]
John Redwood wrote a fevered article in the Telegraph today complaining no one has taken his message on the economy seriously, for which he blames the BBC. It was ever thus in the case of a person who has no argument to present.
But there in the middle of the story was a paragraph that stood [...]
Toronto’s Globe and Mail had a good article on social inequality in Ireland yesterday. It’s big issue, but the bit of the report I really liked was this:
A study published by Trinity College, Dublin economists last year pointed to the Republic’s dependence on investment by foreign manufacturers. The rapid transformation of the Irish economy from [...]
