Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement • Hacker News Board

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#221

Post by mattlondon » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #108

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All that money we spent on roads has locked us into car-dependent infrastructure, killing 40k+/year directly and hundreds of thousands indirectly (air pollution, etc). Great job us.

Public transport, fire engines, ambulances, police etc all use the roads taxes paid for and maintain. Or at least they do in Europe - not sure what the deal is in the US these days

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by tobylane » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

JaakkoP wrote: post #83

This is a shrewd move by Ireland. Multinational companies chose Ireland largely because: 1) Low tax basis 2) English speaking EU country 3) Part of the Euro zone (less important than #1 and #2 to be sure). Given the OECD tax agreement there are fewer low-tax destinations for companies to pick from. And because of Brexit there are no other English-speaking EU countries. Companies in Ireland aren’t going anywhere and i…

Ireland has English style common law, familiar to Americans. Malta doesn’t.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#223

Post by fauigerzigerk » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

someotherperson wrote: post #53

jonas21 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m not sure what this has to do with taxing revenues vs profits. Regardless of whether you provide your services through a limited company and regardless of the IR35 status of any particular contract you can always deduct business expenses from revenues before getting taxed.

The purpose of IR35 is to stop people from avoiding national insurance contributions.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by tobylane » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

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…

English common law is the basis for the American and Irish systems. Continental European countries, including Malta, are different.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by aspaviento » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

pbourke wrote: post #103

jxcole wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? This comment is not about Berlin or Paris, it is mentioning then as examples of non English speaking cities. Is the author supposed to mention every city in Europe?

The Netherlands has the highest English proficiency in the world [0] (among non-native speaking countries) so I imagine it would be a compelling choice. [0] https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/

It doesn't matter how well they speak English if the paperwork needs to be done in a different language.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by necovek » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #168

necovek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one reason to have continually growing "tax function" is to avoid a particular number be more beneficial than a larger number. Eg. someone making $100k is better off than someone else making $100001, but also maybe $120k (depending on the tax rates). Basically, at $100k, there is no incentive to earn more because your net, take-home figure will be lower if you do, until you jump significantly over the hoop.

That is not how marginal tax rates work. I’m not suggesting we abandon marginal tax brackets. In the case of your example, the person who earned $101k would pay tax on the $1k above $100k, i.e. they would pay $200 of taxes. The proposal to start taxing only amounts above $100k is not fundamentally different from the standard deduction or personal allowance that already exists (YMMV by jurisdiction). My proposal is si…

That wasn't clear from the "proposal", and there are tax schemes in the world were it worked exactly like this.

Thanks for the clarification though: this makes more sense indeed.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by rkuska » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

jxcole wrote: post #74

SSLy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why? This comment is not about Berlin or Paris, it is mentioning then as examples of non English speaking cities. Is the author supposed to mention every city in Europe?

Paris is not really much of English speaking city. (I travel to Paris often)

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by nikitaga » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #164

dandotway wrote: post #152

With Hollywood Accounting[1], you make taxable profits transform into untaxable expenses that you pay to yourself for services you rendered to yourself, and Ireland has been a common destination for this sort of money to flow. Hollywood accounting can take several forms. In one form, a subsidiary is formed to perform a given activity and the parent entity will extract money out of the film's revenue in the form of ch…

The US can change their tax system, if they want to. Eg they could tax land value. It's very hard to move land out of the country or hide it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax Or they could tax sales / consumption instead of trying to tax company profits. Company profits are just a bit too nebulous to tax properly. Eg you can reduce your profits just fine by shifting your capital structure from being finan…

The extent to which you can take a sizeable cut of corporate profits by taxing land / real estate is pretty limited because many profitable companies don't need much real estate. There is no rate at which you can sufficiently tax Netflix, Apple or Jane Street just with LVT while not impossibly over taxing most other businesses that use more real estate per dollar of corporate profit. And the solutions to that are not any better than those that are based on taxing corporate profits directly.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by Hamuko » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

thethimble wrote: post #209

skybrian wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A VAT isn’t a sales tax though. I think you can subtract the cost of goods since they were already taxed? Compared with income tax, there are fewer expenses you can subtract from revenue, but there still are some. But since prices will adjust, the question is really one of tax incidence. Who gets to raise prices to cover their taxes? And that’s complicated.

You can subtract the cost of goods but you can’t subtract operating expenses like R&D.

I think you can subtract R&D costs somewhere else. At least I remember the accounting department being really picky about having accurate details on R&D hours.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Post by ithkuil » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

nixass wrote: post #206

rtpg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I mean… Ireland has a higher English proficiency? There are of course a lot of things doable fully in English. But when running a company not mastering the native language (even when all of the people you talk to speak English!) can be a big drawback.

But the US company in Europe would have far more (big majority) of non-US employees. Those employees have far better understanding of Dutch English than Irish English in every day and in corporate life

There are some workers that would relocate with the whole family.

This means the significant other has to find a job and fit it, kids have to go to school.

While many countries have a very decent proficiency in English, you're whole family must fully invest in learning the local language. And that in addition to using English in the office of at least one of the adults (since many big companies use English officially)