“The revelation that Apple paid just $36 million tax on $7.11 billion worth of profits funnelled through an Irish company sounds like old news and the Government has done its best to characterise it as such over the past few days,” John McManus opines for The Irish Times. “It is however much more than old news. The additional detail that is contained in the documents obtained by this newspaper challenge the narrative at the heart of the rearguard action fought by the Government since the news of Apple’s extraordinary efficient tax planning surfaced last year.”
“The Irish position has consistently been that while our rate is very low, it is fixed by statute and is very transparent. Other countries might have higher rates, they argued, but their effective rates in many cases were even lower than the Irish one becuase of various reliefs and concessions. Various studies have been produced over the years to back up this assertion,” McManus writes. “What Apple said last year directly contradicted this. If what they told the US senate was correct then the Irish Government had been less than truthful and you could enter into arrangements with the Irish authorities to achieve an even lower effective rate than 12.5 per cent.”
“Apple have never withdrawn this assertion, but at the same time they have stood back and let the Government kick up as much dust as they can around the issue. The counter narrative advanced by the Government was that there is no special deal but Apple instead availed of a loophole in Irish law that allowed companies to be Irish registered but not Irish domicile,” McManus writes. “This quirk of Irish tax law opened the door to low tax heaven we were told. The loophole was closed in the Budget and the Government seems to have got the “no special deals” narrative back on track. Until last week that was.”
Read more in the full article here.
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