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Dropbox is going brogue
- trengof 14y agoDouble Irish With a Dutch Sandwich Anyone? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Double-Irish-With-A-Dutch-Sandwich.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl...
- maguay 14y agoWhy else Ireland? I highly think it was picked for tax purposes.
- tiernano 14y agoHave you seen our Datacenter Infrastructure (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc)? have you seen our climate (mostly cold, perfect for said datacenters)? We have an educated workforce, are close to mainland Europe, and who doesn't want to work in the home of the Black Stuff (Guinness). Tax could be an incentive, but think of the rest we have also.
- pbiggar 14y agoDon't forget we all speak native English.
- pistoriusp 14y agoAontaím leat!
- mtts 14y agoA native English speaking work force at lower salaries than in the UK helps too :-)
- rsynnott 14y agoThough, these days, the median wage in Ireland is actually substantially higher than in the UK.
- toyg 14y agoWhy anywhere else? Ireland si the "India of Europe" (English fluency, low salaries, decent education) and it has the best tax arrangements among similar countries. Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and the likes, they all basically serve the EU market from Dublin, and it's been like that for 20 years -- the "Celtic Tiger" phenomenon was based on this sort of activity: combining EU membership, low taxes, low salaries and cultural affinities to lure multinationals' HQs. Other EU members tolerated this because, when it started, Ireland was dirt poor. When the bubble burst, there was a lot of schadenfreude sweeping the continent...
- patrickk 14y agoI wouldn't say salaries are that low, Ireland has (or had until recently) one of the highest minimum wage and average industrial wages in the world. The recession has brought wages down somewhat, but you can't compare Ireland to India with regards to pay.
- toyg 14y agoI said "India of Europe"... I was in Dublin last week. Compared to Milan, Paris, London or even Manchester, the Irish cost of living today is much lower. I know quite a few people who moved to Dublin to work in IT, then bounced off to England looking for higher wages. Of course it's not India, it's still an European country with a noticeable welfare state, but I'd argue that you won't find better English speakers for the same amount of money anywhere in Europe.
- patrickk 14y ago"...but I'd argue that you won't find better English speakers for the same amount of money anywhere in Europe." Wow, I must admit I've never heard this opinion expressed before. That was why I was surprised in my previous comment. All you hear in Ireland is that "wages are too high, we're not cost competitive" blah-blah-blah. I've heard that you can get programmers in places like Germany, Scandinavia and parts of Eastern Europe (esp. countries like Estonia, Poland and Latvia) for relatively cheap and they nearly all speak good/great English too. Maybe that is for more contract work than for hiring on a more permanent basis though, I've never hired anyone myself. Can I ask, what line of work are you in? You seem to have a broad perspective on this.
- masklinn 14y agoLow irish taxes mean US subsidiaries generally go there, even if they're not trying to perform tax evasion.
- EamonLeonard 14y agoAnyone dismissing this as purely a tax-play doesn't do service to the thriving, vibrant and diversive tech community that Dublin has. Anyone based here for even a few weeks would know that. Dublin's #1 strength over places like London and Berlin is it's geographic size, which makes meetups accessible, leaders and role models available, and creates a friendly and familiar feel, where we all fee like we are part of something bigger than the startups that are here. Side note: To anyone here on HN visiting Dublin in the future, feel free to connect with us, you'd be very welcome -- @ me on Twitter... @EamonLeonard
- skrebbel 14y agoI'm disappointed the Dutch Sandwich doesn't get its own native language support, then!
- w1ntermute 14y agoHigh English fluency in the Netherlands plus a relatively small population makes it less of a priority than other languages.
- angry-hacker 14y agoI wonder why no they don't talk about it in EU Parliament? It's not like it's a big secret anymore, all the big companies are using it, same time EU bureaucrats are discussing about all kind of new taxes, raising taxes etc. Why not start by closing the loopholes?
- qznc 14y agoFacebook also has its Europe headquarter in Ireland. Something special about the laws there?
- marcamillion 14y agoI suspect it is for tax purposes....the corporate tax rate in Ireland is 15% I believe - in comparison to 30%+ elsewhere in the West.
- rpm4321 14y ago12.5, or 10 if you are manufacturing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republic...
- sargun 14y agoThe tax story in Ireland is incredible. The corporate tax rate is significantly lower than other nations, and often times, the government is willing to make special concessions, or give tax rebates for companies intending on making long term commitments (Amazon is best known for making these deals).
- eoin_murphy 14y agoThat and they probably just got a huge grant for putting their first translation in Irish... But yes, the tax laws in Ireland are incredibly generous, if you're a corporation. I say this as a person just falling into the top tax bracket which means that while most of my wages are taxed at 21% or so (closer to 25%), any bonuses or future wage increases will be taxed at over 50% (once all the levies etc. have been counted in). And there's also the awareness that a significant percentage of that goes towards repaying bondholders in Anglo Irish bank or towards public services who refuse to restructure or update 50 year old work practices. (sorry, rant over) There is also the fact that it's an English speaking country with a pool of relatively highly educated employees who are used to dealing with American businesses. Wages are relatively low compared to the US or England (well, London anyway) and you can have the best and brightest of Europe can relocate with no visa issues (once you can convince them to relocate to a rainy island in the North Atlantic)
- 7777 14y ago> Wusstest du schon, dass Dropbox ihre Nutzer in 175 Ländern Somehow 25 countries got lost while that sentence was translated into German.
- evincarofautumn 14y agoThere are similar differences (oversights?) in all of the translations.
- onetwothreefour 14y agoIt's as if a bunch of Americans wrote a bunch of ill-informed translations in an attempt to make this about translations, and not about tax avoidance. :)
- w1ntermute 14y agoAt first I was wondering why a Chinese translation had been omitted, but then I realized the service was blocked by the Great Firewall.
- matthewrudy 14y agoThat's just the 1 billion Chinese in the mainland. What about the 30 million living here in Taiwan and Hong Kong?
- w1ntermute 14y agoThat's a smaller target audience than for any of the other languages they've provided translations for so far, so it makes sense that they haven't done it until now.
- Kudos 14y agoWell, except Irish ;)
- w1ntermute 14y agoIrish isn't actually available as a translation for Dropbox - they only provided an Irish translation for the announcement on that page.
- pbiggar 14y agoFunnily enough, there's probably more native Chinese speakers in Ireland than there are native Irish speakers!
- w1ntermute 14y agoHaha, I just checked and only 2.9% of the Irish population speaks Irish natively. That's pretty crazy.
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- mpclark 14y agoFiddle-dee-tax!
- weekends 14y agoCead uair ríomh gur chonaic mé comhlacht mhór ag usaid Gaeilge i fógra.
- eoin_murphy 14y agoB'fhéidir go fuair siad mórchuid aireagaid lena chuir isteach ann? Street-cred mar yea.
- rpm4321 14y agoSjf wrnsd asdf wioefj cszkl asdlk oiajf asdnw wsafa awsfadswef. - Actually, I just sat on my keyboard cuz I wanted to fit in :) Just curious - is Gaelic still required in schools and in some dealings w/ government?
- secure 14y agoAFAIK (did an internship in Dublin), irish children still learn Gaelic in school, but not in a way that’d make them able to talk to each other in it, much like Germans in some schools chose to learn latin. You can use the language to decipher old pieces of history, but not to talk about how your day was. I’ve never heard about dealings with the government that could only be done in Gaelic. Everything I did was in English.
- eoin_murphy 14y agoGaelic is compulsory for both primary and secondary school which means that almost everyone will study it between the ages of 5 and 16 (minimum school leaving age). It says something about our approach that all but a very small minority of school leavers are effectively unable to hold a conversation in the language. It's been compulsory since the formation of the Irish state during that time the percentage of actual spoken Irish (as well as general Irish comprehension) has continually dropped. Given that the actual aim of this was to promote the language I think it's safe to say it's been an unmitigated disaster. My personal take on this (I went to an all Irish primary school so I was fluent) is that there's two factors here: 1 - The way it's taught is absolutely terrible. There's a focus on the grammar and structure of the language rather than actually speaking it. This means that students associate it with memorizing genitive and dative cases which is pretty boring. This means the student don't like it. Some of those students grow up to be the teachers, and they've got a negative attitude to the language. Wash, rinse repeat for 90 years and you get to where we are now. 2 - There's no economic incentive to learn the language. Unless you're living in a gaeltacht (nearly all in very rural areas) you're almost never actually going to be able to use it. It's not present in any other country and apart from having conversations which foreigners can't understand, isn't useful. There are reasons to learn it but they're cultural or academic rather than practical. There are signs of regrowth with more and more all Irish schools popping up but my impression is that it's become a middle class status symbol to be able to speak the language so we'll see what happens there. There's also been discussion about reforming the syllabus to split it into conversational Irish (compulsory) and 'academic' Irish (optional) As for dealing with the government, you're permitted (not obligated) to conduct all of your business with officials through Irish and demand that they do the same with you. We have two versions of our constitution, one in Irish and one in English. In the case of any discrepancies, the Irish one takes precedence.
- eccoli 14y agoSo basically, dropbox makes a public announcement to tell the world (and the shareholders) they're now engaging in tax evasion in Europe to make better profit. Hopefully they'll have a better story for the european authorities later on, not like starbucks, amazon or google: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/13/starbucks-google-and-amazon-the-tax-crash-of-monday-afternoon/ http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/13/starbucks-goog...
- MordinSolus 14y agoTax evasion is illegal. I doubt this is illegal, as that would be an incredibly dumb move, so it's not tax evasion. > (and the shareholders) Well of course they are telling their shareholders: they must be rejoicing with the news! Makes you wonder why we don't lower our corporate tax rate in the U.S. Hell, both presidential candidates this election cycle agreed on that.
- ed209 14y agoI'm guessing he's actually referring to tax avoidance. Not sure how long it will last though as the UK is going be clamping down on this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20559791 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20559791
- mtr 14y agoThere's nothing illegal about minimizing your tax burden using lawful techniques.
- ed209 14y agotechnically it's not illegal, but completely immoral. Imagine if I channelled all my PAYE taxes through an offshore company, who would pay for our health system, infrastructure etc.
- lvh 14y agoSo, any company expanding from the US to Ireland is "completely immoral", because it's Ireland?
- lvh 14y agoSo, for everyone shouting "tax evasion": does that mean that any foreign company choosing to expand to Europe in Ireland is criminal?
- ed209 14y agotax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance on the scale of Amazon, Google, Starbucks and Facebook is imoral. It's pretty obvious that these companies have been strategically set up in Ireland as a way of paying less tax. You think it's acceptable that Amazon sold billions of pounds of items in the UK and pay virtually no tax, but still use our roads to facilitate those sales. They basically use our infrastructure for free. Would Amazon let me use a few EC2 instances for nothing, by increasing the hosting cost of everyone one else by a few cents, to host my multi-million dollar website?