Ireland’s corporation tax system, which now brings nearly €24 billion to the exchequer, is “not sustainable”, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has warned.
Mr Ahern said that the rate would face increasing attacks in the years ahead from other countries angry at losing taxes to Ireland. He pointed out that the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) recent €13 billion Apple tax ruling is that profits should be taxed where they are generated.
“I don’t think [it] is going to be sustainable,” he told a conference held by University College Cork, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Galway and Boston College on the United States’ role in the Irish peace process.
Multinationals have set up complicated tax arrangements in Ireland: “They’re doing business far from here. But effectively all the business is being done in the cloud. It’s being done outside of Ireland,” he said.
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The ECJ’s recent €13 billion Apple tax ruling is that profits should be taxed where they are generated, he said: “That’s what the judgment said. And that’s not going to change.”
Meanwhile, former US president Donald Trump’s economic policies “are a threat to everything built in Ireland in my lifetime”, given its dependence on foreign investment and free trade, he said.
Emphasising that he was not taking a side in the US elections, Mr Ahern described the November vote as “a big worry” for Ireland, given Mr Trump’s determination to cut US corporation taxes but to get multinationals to pay more in the US.
Mr Trump’s “number-three” objective, said Mr Ahern, was “to force” multinational companies to return to the US, to make future large investments there and to close tax loopholes. “He mentioned two countries, and one of them was us.”
[ Corporation tax receipts forecast to swell to €37bn a year by 2030Opens in new window ]
Referring to US president Joe Biden’s departure from office next year, Mr Ahern warned that Ireland’s influence in Washington is waning, as Irish-America’s connection with Ireland recedes.
Ireland has depended on influential Capitol Hill politicians for decades, but people like congressman Richie Neal (the influential House of Representatives’ powerful Ways and Means Committee chair) “can’t go on forever”.
Illustrating the decline in Ireland’s Washington influence, Mr Ahern said 50 or 60 Congress figures were members of the Friends of Ireland caucus group in the 1990s. Today, the number was smaller, he said.
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