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Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

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Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#231

Post by [deleted] »

consp wrote: post #218
curation wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in the Netherlands (Eindhoven - not even Amsterdam) I can confirm that the English spoken there was superior to the English I was raised in in rural Ontario where my teachers said "warshing" instead of washing. The Dutch have an incredibly faculty for language and I admire it.

I will have to mention that this varies all over, especially the bit older generation (not exclusively though) also has some weird quirks language wise. So while they might speak and understand the English language quite well the are some parts missing. As an example I like to mention the phrasing of Bolkenstein (a Dutch National/EU politician) of economic handouts to people as "Golden showers". So while proficiency…

[deleted]

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#232

Post by 123pie123 »

curation wrote: post #203
ssb1 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet that an American would understand the English spoken in Amsterdam better than that spoken in pubs or on playgrounds in Ireland.

Having lived in the Netherlands (Eindhoven - not even Amsterdam) I can confirm that the English spoken there was superior to the English I was raised in in rural Ontario where my teachers said "warshing" instead of washing. The Dutch have an incredibly faculty for language and I admire it.

I'm from the UK and whilst working with a handful of dutch, I was blown away not only by their extremely good english but also their ability to understand and the subitle aspects of english - eg comedy/ sarcasium/ passive aggresstion etc..

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#233

Post by Hamuko »

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.

There are non-car-dependent societies that still spend money on roads.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#234

Post by blocked_again »

bojangleslover wrote: post #193
pbourke wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I'm Far more comfortable as a native English speaker in Amsterdam or Copenhagen than London or NYC.

Pretty sure London or NYC has more non native English speakers than Amsterdam and Copenhagen combined. So I don't get your logic.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#235

Post by blocked_again »

lordnacho wrote: post #214
Sebguer wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

There's a lot of weird accents here in the UK. Even cockney sounds odd, and that's local to London. In the same place you'll meet people from Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Scotland and so on, all with distinctive accents that are not so easy for your ordinary American or second language speaker.

Sure. But is it harder to understand than Dutch and Danish. No. Right. I also thought the same.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#236

Post by vegai_ »

dzink wrote: post #61

It matters who is not in. Cyprus doesn’t seem to be on the list, along with many others. All it takes is one country to make this irrelevant.

That's easy to fix, at least technically: punish financially all the countries who don't sign this. Just requires willingness to do this.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#238

Post by IkmoIkmo »

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.

I mean, VAT is not a tax on revenue, it's a tax on added value. In essence it's a form of profit taxing already.

If you buy $10 of flower (including VAT) and turn it into $15 of bread (including VAT), you effectively only pay value added tax on $5. If you're generating no real margins and just have a lot of volume, you're effectively also paying no real VAT.

The difficulty is with cross-border transactions.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#239

Post by klausjensen »

legulere wrote: post #210
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…

There’s still Malta with English as an official language inside the EU and Gibraltar is now part of Schengen area as a result of Brexit. Both are pretty small though.

Malta is riddled with corruption and has no real banking options. It also has a very different legal system than IE/UK/US.

Re: Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

#240

Post by IkmoIkmo »

dzink wrote: post #61

It matters who is not in. Cyprus doesn’t seem to be on the list, along with many others. All it takes is one country to make this irrelevant.

No, it just matters if countries are willing to implement consequences for non-membership. And that's frankly a pretty trivial thing from a political and technical perspective, so I'm assuming it'll come. Various countries already have lists, e.g. the EU has lists for 'non-cooperative third-countries', which can be used by member states to add witholding taxes for transactions with these countries in-particular as a preemtive measure to reduce aggressive tax avoidance.

Ireland is not joining this agreement for no reason, they're doing it because non-membership will hurt them more in the end.

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