A chara, – It was not without appreciable hope that I read the following sentence in the editorial "Corporation tax: defending the indefensible" (December 2nd): "It is morally, politically and economically wrong for Ireland to allow vastly wealthy corporations to escape the basic duty of paying tax."
Though it has taken some time for this statement to appear in this explicit manner, though reaching agreement on its implications and their implementation will be an extremely difficult process, and though a fiscal injustice with global fallout will continue to persist for some time, a monumental precedent has been set by The Irish Times – there's no going back now.
In the coming months and years it may help to remember the following: one of the driving axioms of the libertarianism propagated by many founders and executives of the pertinent multinational corporations is to consider every tax levied by a governmental authority as illegitimate; indeed, the governmental authority itself is regarded in some versions of libertarianism as illegitimate. Thus, defending the basic duty of paying tax may well be synonymous with defending democratic government as we know it. – Is mise,
JOHN FARRELL,
Frankfurt,
Germany.