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Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#51

Post by jldugger »

gerdesj wrote: post #46
collectedparts wrote: post #42

My take on this is that Ireland is now willing to come into compliance because post-Brexit, they now have a monopoly on "urban core that could sustain an HQ for multinationals in a natively-English-speaking country in the EU." In other words, they relied on tax advantages as a differentiator for companies to choose Dublin over London for their EU HQ. But now, what would you choose if not Dublin? Obviously Paris and B…

I don't think you realize which Ireland you are talking about. There's Éire which is the Republic and there is also Northern Ireland, which is the UK bit in Britain. If UKoGBnNI decided to set a low tax rate ...

I promise you the Dubliners speak english well enough for the multinationals.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#52

Post by Macha »

munk-a wrote: post #20
m0zg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it'll make Dublin a worse place. That's something local governments should keep in mind. Also, the top corporations OWN the governments worldwide at this point. The suggestion that any of this will significantly affect them is naive at best.

I don't disagree - I can't imagine Ireland signed onto this without getting a serious benefit from it... and I think that ideally we should be looking at solutions that don't require any individual country to be altruistic - but still, I'm happy the change has happened.

I think it's literally a case of it was getting done with or without the Irish government, so they took the "all members will have a minumum of at least 15%" to "all members will have a minimum of 15%" change so they had something to present as a win and to avoid a later discussion raising the minimum further.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#53

Post by someotherperson »

jonas21 wrote: post #43
jgeada wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet they tax individuals on our revenues and not our profits …

If you're operating a business as an individual (sole proprietor), you deduct expenses and only pay taxes on profits.

Most[0] countries would still make you pay income tax for whatever you earn for your personal services and not class it as part of the business' revenue. I believe in the UK this was addressed with IR35[0] and in Australia it is called as PSI[1]

[0] This loophole started being closed in the late 90s/early 00s and continues to be closed in the remaining countries that haven't yet addressed it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35

[2] https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Personal-services-income/

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#54

Post by kardianos »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #48
SSLy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mention Berlin and Paris, then also Amsterdam and Warsaw deserve mentions.

Warsaw? We’re becoming the Texas of Europe, more than a little unpalatable.

Have you been to Texas? We like it here.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#55

Post by jamestnz »

Brakenshire wrote: post #9
munk-a wrote: post #6

I've always been baffled as to how this is seen as a multi-national issue. The US could always implement unilateral minimum VAT and profit[3] taxes on corporations forcing them to effectively pay whatever proportion the US demands to continue doing business in the world's largest consumer market. Just because you're only paying 3%[1] profit[3] tax in Bermuda doesn't mean you can necessarily skate around the remaining…

Governments want to tax profits rather than revenues. A tax on revenues would kill a lot of high growth businesses.

>A tax on revenues would kill a lot of high growth businesses

And also low-margin businesses. If you tax a business on its total sales rather than profits, a low-margin and high-volume operation cannot survive as easily.

Example. A supermarket chain makes many sales, collecting average 5% margins on a sale. A seller of high-end automobiles moves fewer units, but can take a 15% margin. Assume both businesses make the same $1m sales in a year.

If you're taxing profits at 20% the supermarket pays $10k on $50k profit while the car dealer pays $30k on $150k profit, for a total tax take of $40k.

If you're instead taxing total sales at 2%, each will pay $20k on their $1m sales. The same total taxes were raised, but the tax burden (at least in terms of retained earnings that are now available for reinvestment) has fallen differently. The supermarket is paying 40% of their profits in taxes, the car dealer is paying 13.3% of their profits in taxes.

And if a business makes only 1% average margin on their sales, they are underwater by this scheme. ($1m sales, $10k profit, $20k tax).

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#56

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

jldugger wrote: post #51
gerdesj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you realize which Ireland you are talking about. There's Éire which is the Republic and there is also Northern Ireland, which is the UK bit in Britain. If UKoGBnNI decided to set a low tax rate ...

I promise you the Dubliners speak english well enough for the multinationals.

Heck, they speak better than plenty of English people I know...

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#57

Post by sgjohnson »

munk-a wrote: post #24
lettergram wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw 100 new $740m shell companies lol

Assuming Irish tax collections aren't idiots either one of those companies owns all the shell companies - or those "independent" companies will be cooperating in a very anti-trust vulnerable manner.

It doesn’t matter if they are idiots or not. The only thing that matters is whether they care.

Probably not, which means that the game of tax competition just became less transparent.

Sure, the headline rate may now be 15%, but so what if the tax collectors don’t care?

Besides it’d probably still be significantly cheaper for companies to pay the fine for any “alleged wrongdoing” than to pay the headline tax rate.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#58

Post by c2h5oh »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #48
SSLy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mention Berlin and Paris, then also Amsterdam and Warsaw deserve mentions.

Warsaw? We’re becoming the Texas of Europe, more than a little unpalatable.

More like Alabama from stereotypes

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#59

Post by ericmay »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #45
busymom0 wrote: post #16

I have never understood the whole "tax the rich" idea and I am not rich, don't own a house or car or stocks or anything expensive. When and how will the taxes help you and me? The money just ends up going to a black hole for the government to spent inefficiently. And if you are in the US, the money gets spent on funding the military industrial complex for bombing more countries, regime changes, intelligence agencies,…

Here's a short list of things tax money funds: Roads Schools Healthcare (in civilized countries) Making sure companies selling medicine aren't killing people Making sure companies don't dump toxic waste into rivers and lakes Note that comparing Walmart vs the government is especially funny since most of Warlmart's expansion comes from the fact that it under-pays it's workers so much that the federal government has to…

> Healthcare (in civilized countries)

When you say things like this, you just push back the goal of national healthcare in America. Stop. I want national healthcare and the only way to get it involves not pissing people off by calling them uncivilized.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#60

Post by SamPatt »

yesenadam wrote: post #39
busymom0 wrote: post #16

I have never understood the whole "tax the rich" idea and I am not rich, don't own a house or car or stocks or anything expensive. When and how will the taxes help you and me? The money just ends up going to a black hole for the government to spent inefficiently. And if you are in the US, the money gets spent on funding the military industrial complex for bombing more countries, regime changes, intelligence agencies,…

(I'm not in the US, and agree that that's a disgraceful list.) Inefficient compared to what? What is your proposed alternative? > When and how will the taxes help you and me? Well.. for example, you use roads I assume.

The vast majority of roads are managed at the state and local level. The overall expenditure for roads at the federal level is a very small portion of the budget.
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