# MEPs attack Irish corporate tax rate



## DerKaiser (30 Nov 2010)

_From RTE.ie_

_A row has broken out in the European Parliament over Ireland's 12.5% corporate tax rate._
_It has emerged that eight mostly French and German MEPs have issued a declaration attacking Ireland's corporate tax rate and calling for a minimum EU-wide corporate tax rate of 25%._
_What has heightened the dispute is the fact that the eight MEPs are all co-ordinators for the different political groupings in the parliament and are, as such, representatives for those groupings on an influential parliamentary committee._
_The declaration invites signatures from other MEPs and if it can gather the support of 350 MEPs, it then becomes the position of the European Parliament._

There's been a growing feeling of unease about the way the EU has approached the Irish bailout.  It's now obvious that they basically want to crush us.

We need to think long and hard about our next move.  FF, FG and Labour need to start into some intensive dialogue as the vultures are circling.


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## bullworth (30 Nov 2010)

It looks like our EU ''friends'' are kicking us when we are down. We should evaluate what kind of ''friendship'' we actually have with them. Almost every party bent over backwards to get the Lisbon treaty through. They need to take another look at where this EU project is going and take another look at what influence we actually have inside the EU. It might be we would be better off in EFTA.


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## Mouldy (1 Dec 2010)

Our reply sould be this (preferably said in a gruff Offaly accent): "Shut yer pieholes or we'll lower it to 9%."

Its nonsense like this that ensures the Irish public will not vote though any more treaties for the EU.

M


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## Ceist Beag (1 Dec 2010)

Mouldy said:


> Our reply sould be this (preferably said in a gruff Offaly accent): "Shut yer pieholes or we'll lower it to 9%."
> 
> Its nonsense like this that ensures the Irish public will not vote though any more treaties for the EU.
> 
> M



 It seems to me that the EU is falling apart and all the accounts of the past few weeks certainly show that Irish interests and the EU interests are not the one and the same. It was interesting to see how keen the UK and Sweden were to be seen to offer Ireland funding last week as well. The Euro could be doomed if this goes on much longer.


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## bluemac (1 Dec 2010)

Mouldy

i like that lower it to 0% for the first 2 years for any new large over 100 employee companies setting up here..  could be a win win. put in a few terms and cond. so they carnt just leave after 2 years..


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## shnaek (1 Dec 2010)

You have to consider their own electorates. Bailing out Ireland and Greece, or any other country for that matter is not a popular move, especially considering we pay ourselves higher than the countries that are bailing us out. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot? 
We should expect an adverse reaction to us, but that shouldn't stop us negotiating hard - because the reality is that we need to negotiate hard. 
But I must say I find it embarassing that we voted for Europe while they granted us 60bn, and we vote against it when it looks like we'll have to pay our share. Just like our neutrality and lack of racism, our friendliness to the EU is being shown up to be a sham.


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## Ceist Beag (1 Dec 2010)

shnaek said:


> You have to consider their own electorates. Bailing out Ireland and Greece, or any other country for that matter is not a popular move, especially considering we pay ourselves higher than the countries that are bailing us out. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?
> We should expect an adverse reaction to us, but that shouldn't stop us negotiating hard - because the reality is that we need to negotiate hard.
> But I must say I find it embarassing that we voted for Europe while they granted us 60bn, and we vote against it when it looks like we'll have to pay our share. Just like our neutrality and lack of racism, our friendliness to the EU is being shown up to be a sham.



How about you look at it the other way shnaek? The German and French banks recklessly lent money to our (equally reckless) banks in the pursuit of further profits and we are now taking a loan from these very same countries to pay back the loans they gave our banks! Alright maybe that's simplifying things a little bit but I do find it very hard to accept that we are somehow being helped by these countries now given the rate and terms they are trying to impose on the loans given whilst at the same time demanding that their own banks cannot take any of the pain for their part in the mess. The EU is not granting us anything that isn't in their own best interest, not ours as far as I'm concerned.


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## Complainer (1 Dec 2010)

From a European point of view, a minimum rate is very sensible. Multi-nationals in particular will use/abuse the free market by moving their base to the lowest tax economy. This is a real race to the bottom. In the US, some states reduced their corporation tax to zero so they just get the associated spending taxes - the corporations are wetting themselves laughing at how they can take Govts for a ride.


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## Shawady (1 Dec 2010)

Just to play devil's advocate for a minute, do they have a point?
We are being bailed out because we can no longer borrow on the markets to fund our large deficit. From their point of view, they are help us keep our economy afloat yet we get to keep a very low corporation tax which gives us an advantage in attracting multi-nationals.


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## bullworth (1 Dec 2010)

shnaek said:


> You have to consider their own electorates. Bailing out Ireland and Greece, or any other country for that matter is not a popular move, especially considering we pay ourselves higher than the countries that are bailing us out. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?
> We should expect an adverse reaction to us, but that shouldn't stop us negotiating hard - because the reality is that we need to negotiate hard.
> But I must say I find it embarassing that we voted for Europe while they granted us 60bn, and we vote against it when it looks like we'll have to pay our share. Just like our neutrality and lack of racism, our friendliness to the EU is being shown up to be a sham.



If the lame duck government gets its way the state will pay them 5 billion plus more per year for the privilege of bailing out their bondholder stockmarket gamblers via these IMF/EU loans. And the black hole of indebtedness still aint filled shnaek. We are taking out massive loans to pay their gambling debts and will see no economic stimulus in return. Its time to be less grateful towards the EU. The Euro they designed is fundamentally flawed and almost destroyed our nation. I find bringing up racism and friendliness to be ridiculous. We have taken in more immigrants relative to our small size than anyone else over the last 10 years and they have mostly integrated very well considering what a shock it was on our resources for schools, healthcare, social welfare etc. Not to mention the fact that the concept of immigration in this country was a completely new thing to everyone. A learning curve is to be expected but we should resent being automatically labelled as racist because an accident of our own birth makes us different from the new arrivals.


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## Ceist Beag (1 Dec 2010)

Shawady said:


> From their point of view, they are help us keep our economy afloat yet we get to keep a very low corporation tax which gives us an advantage in attracting multi-nationals.



That would be the low corporation tax we need if our economy is to have any chance of recovery!!


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## Shawady (1 Dec 2010)

I'm not suggesting it is our interest to raise it - it is obviously is not.
I'm just looking at the view from other European countries. It was mentioned on Prime Time a couple of weeks ago that if it was raised to 15%, it would bring in an extra 700 million. Would large multi-nationals really leave the country over this?
Anyway, I get the impression the EU don't care if we recover or not.


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## bullworth (1 Dec 2010)

We should act in our own interests in relation to Europe and probably lower the corporation tax rate by half  not only to show the EU that we are sovereign and give them the finger but to stop the hemorrhaging  of jobs to eastern europe e.g Dell etc. We should have been proactive before they left. All the companies planning to exit business in Ireland should have been polled to discover where the fine line is between staying or continuing to leave. We should have looked at their books and done a deal. It costs them money to build new infrastructure abroad and it also takes time and this would have been well flagged. 
We should have looked at the numbers. Each job leaving the country will be extremely difficult to replace and will incur an additional cost via social welfare payments etc. The social costs due to crime and areas becoming run down due to large numbers of newly unemployed also puts pressure on all our services. Plus when the upturn arrives globally we need to have retained our most skilled people. We paid for their education and other countries will benefit from their work if they leave. The corporation tax rate could only possibly go up once we have crunched all the many hundreds of thousands of variables, once we have companies established giving jobs which wont leave due to an increased tax rate which are here for something else we can provide. Companies which create jobs should have  a better deal too. Its easier to retain jobs than to create new ones.


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## shnaek (1 Dec 2010)

bullworth said:


> We should act in our own interests in relation to Europe and probably lower the corporation tax rate by half  not only to show the EU that we are sovereign and give them the finger but to stop the hemorrhaging  of jobs to eastern europe e.g Dell etc. We should have been proactive before they left. All the companies planning to exit business in Ireland should have been polled to discover where the fine line is between staying or continuing to leave. We should have looked at their books and done a deal. It costs them money to build new infrastructure abroad and it also takes time and this would have been well flagged.
> We should have looked at the numbers. Each job leaving the country will be extremely difficult to replace and will incur an additional cost via social welfare payments etc. The social costs due to crime and areas becoming run down due to large numbers of newly unemployed also puts pressure on all our services. Plus when the upturn arrives globally we need to have retained our most skilled people. We paid for their education and other countries will benefit from their work if they leave. The corporation tax rate could only possibly go up once we have crunched all the many hundreds of thousands of variables, once we have companies established giving jobs which wont leave due to an increased tax rate which are here for something else we can provide. Companies which create jobs should have  a better deal too. Its easier to retain jobs than to create new ones.



I agree with all that.


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## DerKaiser (1 Dec 2010)

Complainer said:


> In the US, some states reduced their corporation tax to zero so they just get the associated spending taxes - the corporations are wetting themselves laughing at how they can take Govts for a ride.


 
Cheek of them to think they could get away without having to pay through the nose for social welfare and any inefficiencies in public spending.

In reality, who is really being taken for a ride?


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## DerKaiser (1 Dec 2010)

Shawady said:


> It was mentioned on Prime Time a couple of weeks ago that if it was raised to 15%, it would bring in an extra 700 million. Would large multi-nationals really leave the country over this?


I think we would definitely lose out on expansion plans and new investment.  Obviously this equals jobs.  The 12.5% tax is our primary (if not only) jobs stimulus package.

Anyone who wants to get rid of it has no right to bemoan the fact that there is no jobs stimulus


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## DerKaiser (1 Dec 2010)

bullworth said:


> Each job leaving the country will be extremely difficult to replace and will incur an additional cost via social welfare payments etc.


 
I've read the Ryanair book recently.  The thing that struck me was how long it took the other airlines to realise that where they were hemorrhaging cash, Ryanair were making massive profits with the same fares on the same routes.  It was only a price war for the large inefficient airlines, it was profitable business as usual for Ryanair.

My point here is that we could have a very successful economy if we keep the costs of doing business here low. This means:

1) Low taxes (for which we need efficient government)
2) Lower minimum wage (Most of the 450,000 people on the dole should be delighted with this if it can be the catalyst for jobs)
3) Low rents (we should be heading that way with excess property - NAMA should take the initiative) 

The phrase 'race to the bottom' was levelled at Ryanair many times, oddly they are in the top 2 european airlines.


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## Firefly (1 Dec 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> The phrase 'race to the bottom' was levelled at Ryanair many times, oddly they are in the top 2 european airlines.



This phrase has come up before here in AAM. it raises different emotions/responses from different posters. For me we should be racing to the bottom vis-a-vis the countries we want to compete against for FDI and to support our indiginous exporters, rather than racing to the bottom in absolute terms - we're never going to be cheaper that say Taiwan at producing plastic toys, but we should be cheaper that say Scotland at producing computer-related products and pharma.


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## Purple (1 Dec 2010)

The socially positive thing about capitalism is that capital is mobile and so flows to where it will maximise the return on investment. This means value which often means low costs, i.e. low wages and taxes. It is this mobility of capital that turned Korea from one of the poorest countries in the world into a thriving democratic society in two generations, just as it is doing in Vietnam, Poland, Estonia and Costa Rica. If a country into which the flow of capital does not enrich the population the failure is a political one. 
Those who speak about a race to the bottom in this country are utter hypocrites; they are trying to protect the status quo, the haves from the have not’s. The International Socialist Bearded Brotherhood don’t seem to think that people in other countries should have the same opportunities as we had. If they did they would have objected to Dell, Intel, Abbott, Vistakon, Citybank, Stryker, DePuy, IBM, HP, Boston Scientific etc etc etc moving jobs into Ireland ‘cause let’s be clear; they sacked their more expensive workforce elsewhere in order to move jobs here. 

We has our time in the sun, why object to others having their?


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## Mouldy (1 Dec 2010)

All socialism is local


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## Complainer (1 Dec 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> Cheek of them to think they could get away without having to pay through the nose for social welfare and any inefficiencies in public spending.


Yes indeed -that's all that tax is spent on, and I'm sure you will never, ever in your lifetime benefit from any social welfare payment - right?



DerKaiser said:


> In reality, who is really being taken for a ride?


The collective citizens of the EU. When Google is let away with paying just 2.4% tax on its profits (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/22/no-bailout-for-ireland), we're all getting taken for a ride.


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## DerKaiser (1 Dec 2010)

Complainer said:


> Yes indeed -that's all that tax is spent on, and I'm sure you will never, ever in your lifetime benefit from any social welfare payment - right?



I'm sure I might, so I don't get too upset about paying tax out of income for that.

Living in the real world, however, we are a sovereign nation (for now) that can set its own tax rates. We have nothing to apologise to Europe for in that regard.  

As Purple has already pointed out, should Eastern Europe or Asia not benefit from their lower costs.

If you can run a country in an efficient way that encourages employment, enterprise and growth at the expense of bloated inefficient economies that's not being a 'bad neighbour'


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## csirl (2 Dec 2010)

We should remind them that if we decide to leave the EU, then we will take our fishing territory with us i.e. half the north atlantic. If Spain & Portugal are in trouble now, they'll be in even worse trouble with no fishing rights.

We should start insisting that Trichet resigns - he's the one who said Irish banks were ok and stress tested etc. We should insist on accountability.


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## Complainer (2 Dec 2010)

csirl said:


> We should start insisting that Trichet resigns - he's the one who said Irish banks were ok and stress tested etc. We should insist on accountability.


I'm not sure that Cowen/Lenihen would have much credibility to go insisting that those who caused the bust should resign.


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