Full coverage: Multinationals

This Thursday evening is the moment chosen by the Irish Government to officialise its adhesion to a global pact to raise corporation tax to a floor of 15%. Since The Currency's launch in September 2019, we have been keeping track of the biggest business story connecting Ireland to the wider world. Catch up with our best coverage of the issue.

Some columns are exercises in whataboutery. This column is an exercise in whatifery. Corporation tax receipts here are supposed to fall in the coming years. What if they rise?

New investment in Waterford is good news. As tax reform looms, the multinational’s confirmed choice of Ireland as it prepares to lure investors to buy its contact lens business is even better.

As the Irish government invites the business community to take part in the debate on multinational tax reform, we ask Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe and OECD tax chief Pascal Saint-Amans what is coming next.

There is no stopping an international agreement to increase the corporate tax take from those multinationals that have benefited most from globalisation, including by locating in Ireland. This leaves a lot of room where tax attractiveness can be more useful.

As yet another international meeting opens to try and hammer out a deal on multinational taxation, high-tech US giants continue to boost Ireland’s corporation tax take. How would this change under proposed new rules?

When the multi-billion dollar software business SUSE changed hands in 2019, the proceeds trickled back to the UK-based Micro Focus group – but not until they had transited through Irish companies enjoying Caribbean tax residency. This is how the deal was done.

Since Tuesday, we have heard from the European Commission on its corporate taxation plans for the next three years, Washington has laid down its cards for OECD-led talks on the issue, a visiting French minister and US multinationals have chimed in, and Paschal Donohoe spoke on the issue not once but twice. So, what have we learned?

The demise of the double Irish has left Ireland better off as multinationals switched to a range of other tax schemes to locate profits here. In delaying its tax harmonisation plans, the European Commission wants to harness the Covid and Biden effects to go after them all.

Khaled Sakr led the IMF’s recent mission to Ireland. In an extensive interview, he talks about how the crisis accelerated a two-tier economy, the need to get more women into the labour force and institutional investors in the housing market.