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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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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