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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1204 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 21

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading. Megathread for the Israel-Palestine conflict is here though if you want to talk about it in this thread as well feel free.

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Ireland (I will update this later as I do more reading)

It seems giving multinational companies low tax rates is a gift that keeps on giving. Despite a massive increase on covid related spending Ireland ended up with a 10 billion euro budget surplus (this is apparently going to increase to 65 billion by 2027), and they've made use of it to pass a generous 'cost of living' budget consisting of tax cuts, tax credit increases, a minimum wage increase, introduction of more one off welfare payments and an increase in the existing ones in a bunch of different areas. The healthcare sector is seeing a hiring freeze to reduce massive overspending, and the Minister for Health has conceded that there will be a large funding shortfall as a result of this budget (everyone knows the healthcare system does poorly given its funding but no politician has been willing to tackle the issue head on).

Ireland is still a very expensive country to live in and not everyone has a nice job with a tech or pharmaceutical firm, so while this budget is generous its unclear whether it will keep up with the rising costs of day to day life (most of all the insane housing market).

Are these like an unusually generous set of reforms pressured by the protests / political polls, or was this sort of an expected, normal bill?

It’s in line with Fine Gael’s more liberal bent and Fianna Fáil’s tendency for big tax cuts before elections, so it’s not surprising in that sense.

I’m just surprised that after spending so much during Covid and some more as a result of the war in Ukraine debt hasn’t gotten out of hand like it did after the housing market crash. Belts are certainly tightening for the Irish people but Ireland is so FDI loaded that a few big companies seeing profits can offset a lot. There seems to be little relation between the financial problems of people living in Ireland and what the government is making.

Whatever Ireland gains from this comes partially at the expensive of people in other countries. The corporations should be paying more tax there, instead they pay less in Ireland.

Right on the is, but I'd disagree on the ought. This discrepancy shows that other countries tax too heavily, and offer too little in exchange. Ireland is making a better offer. This seems to me to be a free-ish market working as intended.

Do those big tax loopholes still exist? I know that the government closed some and iirc they’ve agreed to the European 15% corporate tax rate, but maybe corporate accountants are still one step ahead.

This is just one paper but it seems like a good chunk of the royalty money saved under the ‘Double-Irish’ loophole was redirected to the US after it was closed in 2015. Seems like they have more of a right to be angry than Europeans: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4285001

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