4 ms·

I never said that companies aren’t getting taxed - I said they’re avoiding/evading the massive amount of tax they /should/ be paying in the EU and instead only

by yunohn 3y ago

I never said that companies aren’t getting taxed - I said they’re avoiding/evading the massive amount of tax they /should/ be paying in the EU and instead only paying the bare minimum that IE wants from them.

disgruntledphd2 3y ago
Then you should lobby your national government to fight for this interest at EU level. Note that you'll need to accept common debt and burden sharing if you want any hope of it passing. If you don't want those things, then you're accepting tax competition as part of the price you pay for avoiding things you don't want. Like, Ireland has incredibly high debt that we weren't allowed to default on by the EU/IMF/ECB so if you fix that, then I suspect the Irish people would be super happy to stop this unfair tax competition that you're talking about.
- yunohn 3y ago
  It’s not clear to me why you keep rephrasing all of the IE gov’s tax evasion support as “competition”. Becoming a tax haven is not a great longterm strategy and is not in the populace’s best interests. The gov is supporting business not people.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    > It’s not clear to me why you keep rephrasing all of the IE gov’s tax evasion support as “competition”. Can you explain to me why it's tax evasion rather than tax competition? Like, taxation is not an EU competency so it's up to member states. As for why it happened, basically Ireland has no natural resources, no historical wealth and was a basket case for hundreds of years. The government/civil servants decided that the best thing to do was to try and entice large multinationals to set up here, based first on it being an English speaking country, and it's really low wages. The wages increased, and the pitch became that we were part of the EU, and didn't tax global revenue (just the Irish revenue), and didn't apply VAT on exports (particularly of interest to pharma). And quite frankly, speaking as an Irish person, this was definitely in my best interests, as my generation of Irish people was the first to not have to emigrate for work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of transfer pricing schemes in general, but those are the rules and Ireland played them relatively well. > The gov is supporting business not people. Historically true, the multinationals I worked for tended to pay very little tax, and I paid loads but not any more, since about 2016.

by yunohn 3y ago

disgruntledphd2 3y ago

Then you should lobby your national government to fight for this interest at EU level. Note that you'll need to accept common debt and burden sharing if you want any hope of it passing. If you don't want those things, then you're accepting tax competition as part of the price you pay for avoiding things you don't want. Like, Ireland has incredibly high debt that we weren't allowed to default on by the EU/IMF/ECB so if you fix that, then I suspect the Irish people would be super happy to stop this unfair tax competition that you're talking about.

yunohn 3y ago
It’s not clear to me why you keep rephrasing all of the IE gov’s tax evasion support as “competition”. Becoming a tax haven is not a great longterm strategy and is not in the populace’s best interests. The gov is supporting business not people.
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  > It’s not clear to me why you keep rephrasing all of the IE gov’s tax evasion support as “competition”. Can you explain to me why it's tax evasion rather than tax competition? Like, taxation is not an EU competency so it's up to member states. As for why it happened, basically Ireland has no natural resources, no historical wealth and was a basket case for hundreds of years. The government/civil servants decided that the best thing to do was to try and entice large multinationals to set up here, based first on it being an English speaking country, and it's really low wages. The wages increased, and the pitch became that we were part of the EU, and didn't tax global revenue (just the Irish revenue), and didn't apply VAT on exports (particularly of interest to pharma). And quite frankly, speaking as an Irish person, this was definitely in my best interests, as my generation of Irish people was the first to not have to emigrate for work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of transfer pricing schemes in general, but those are the rules and Ireland played them relatively well. > The gov is supporting business not people. Historically true, the multinationals I worked for tended to pay very little tax, and I paid loads but not any more, since about 2016.