Between 2015 and 2020 a good bit of the extra 12 billion you posted about came from companies paying more Corporation tax where the government tightened up on corporation tax loopholes hoping to head off the changes we are now seeing,Google: "ESRI Broad-based tax increases may be needed to fund future public spending"
A percentage point on the lower tax rate & a percentage point on the upper tax rate would bring in an extra billion according to the ESRI
I'd love to hear more from the ESRI on what to do about the government revenues now... the only thing I can see is lowering the tax rate bands to include more higher rate tax payers or at least freeze them for 2 or 3 years to let inflation catch up.... if government revenues excluding PRSI are €62 billion in 2020 and were approx €50 Billion in 2015 that's increasing approx €2 Billion every year just with inflation, thereby covering the deficit from corporation tax... some mild austerity might be in order
GDP is a nonsense is an almost meaningless figure to use in this country as it is so inflated by the MNC's who are resident in Ireland but carry out very little economic activity here. GNP* is a much better figure to use.I would like less tax by the way but we have some of the lowest tax to GDP in Europe so we can't complain too much either... Google: tax revenue to gdp ratio
They only came up with GNI* I think it was called after they were ridiculed internationally when GDP rose by a ridiculous amount as described above by bunny , that's where the "leprauchan economics" term came from. The whole shenanigans of moving intellectual property from silicon valley to Ireland should never have been allowed , I doubt we benefited much from that intellectually, is an Irish tech or pharma company going to come up the next generation iPhone or covid vaccine?GDP is a nonsense is an almost meaningless figure to use in this country as it is so inflated by the MNC's who are resident in Ireland but carry out very little economic activity here. GNP* is a much better figure to use.
We're not the only country with a massively inflated GDP and GNI has been around for a while but GNI* is an Irish invention which controls for the distortionary effect of Multinationals on our macro economic statistics.They only came up with GNI* I think it was called after they were ridiculed internationally when GDP rose by a ridiculous amount as described above by bunny , that's where the "leprauchan economics" term came from.
We benefit from it massively; we use the taxes we steal from other countries to fund our bloated and grossly inefficient State sector.The whole shenanigans of moving intellectual property from silicon valley to Ireland should never have been allowed , I doubt we benefited much from that intellectually, is an Irish tech or pharma company going to come up the next generation iPhone or covid vaccine?
The focus is on the tech companies though and the gargantuan profits and power they now have, governments don't like that in their eyes the tech companies have moved into their arena and they want to bring them down a notch or two. The fact that Ireland hosts these here means we are really in the firing line now. Also the fact that all the G7 governments want more tax from them and they are mainly US companies we dont have much say really.If Rishi has signed up to this and will bring the crown dependencies along then while it's crap for Ireland, I can see it being good for the world as a whole.
Combined with the other challenges these companies face here, it may begin to tip the balance out of our favour. Some of those challenges being expensive housing in the city centre, high cost of living, poor public transport, heavy traffic levels, perception that income taxes are high (compared to their US based colleagues), not enough local talent combined with difficulties bringing in talent from non-EU countries to name a few I’m aware of as being a concern.I don't think at this stage that they would make their decision solely based on tax to pay.
I know a few people working in the FAANG companies here, lower pay and higher taxes than in the US are regular grumbles about being based here.Pay would not be an issue up to now because of the low corporation tax they were paying,
In fact, some may have allowed pay to drift up high
The problem is that we have the wrong conversation about these issues. The bottom line is that the State is very inefficient in delivering services and infrastructure. Therefore we have to tax more to deliver less.I know a few people working in the FAANG companies here, lower pay and higher taxes than in the US are regular grumbles about being based here.
I don’t think we can/should fix either of these though to be clear, just saying they’re on the list of cons. The housing/traffic/transport however is something that has been called out by these companies for years, could have been fixed had we started earlier and would have been for the betterment of everybody in Ireland not just these high-end employees. It’s a real shame.
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