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The EU promotes fiscal and regulatory competition and mobility of people, companies, and capital since many years. But as soon as there's true competition, the
by jk4930 12y ago
The EU promotes fiscal and regulatory competition and mobility of people, companies, and capital since many years. But as soon as there's true competition, the bigger ones (with plenty of wasteful spending) don't work on themselves but bully the smaller competitors into compliance.
- riffraff 12y agoexcept this is not asking ireland to raise their low tax rate, it's about closing a loophole that allows companies not to pay taxes in ireland either.
- bhc 12y agoThe reason EU cracked down on Ireland is because it offered special deals where Microsoft and other select multinationals got to pay lower corporate tax rate than other companies incorporated in Ireland. Ireland is being pressured by EU regulators because offering lower tax for only certain companies is a form of _state subsidy_ that results in _market distortion_. Ikea, the Swedish company that is a pioneer in now-common aggressive profit shifting practices, is not being pursued by EU since it doesn't have a special deal with the Netherlands (where Ikea has a paper company that gets all of its profit shovelled into) where it gets to pay lower corporate tax than other companies incorporated in the Netherlands.