Full coverage: Multinationals

Another day, another multi-billion dollar liquidation of a healthy Irish subsidiary by a multinational. Western Digital has taken advantage of US tax breaks to repatriate profits accumulated over the past 15 years by the popular brand of USB drives.

The volume of assets realised through members’ voluntary liquidations has increased nearly 30-fold during the first five months of this year. Why do so many shareholders agree to shut down their company and walk with the cash?

The consequences of the Apple case continue to reverberate, with the recently renamed NortonLifeLock just one of the multinationals changing their corporate structures. After intellectual property transfers and the liquidation of corporate entities straddling Ireland and Jersey, new filings provide the missing piece of the jigsaw in the US online security giant’s Irish move: the consolidation of its global sales empire in a Dublin business park.

The 2016 state aid decision and yesterday’s court judgment quashing it book-end four years that have seen hundreds of billions worth of intellectual property routed to Ireland. The case has influenced where multinationals locate the source of profits, and this influence is set to continue.

Judges in Luxembourg have found that the European Commission failed to prove Irish tax deals with Apple were illegal. The main reason? Investigators didn’t go far enough in their probing of the Revenue’s “incomplete and occasionally inconsistent” rulings.

Since the crisis began, the Revenue Commissioners have halted audit work, allowed firms to warehouse debt and rolled out the state’s wage subsidy scheme. In an exclusive interview, its chairman Niall Cody talks about Covid-19, multinational tax structures and the Revenue’s battle against tax avoidance.

An Irish subsidiary of professional software multinational Cadence recently disclosed new balance sheet data in routine filings associated with a merger. They showed its assets had just jumped by $4.7 billion.

The US-based cybersecurity multinational recently renamed NortonLifeLock is winding up a multi-billion dollar Irish-registered subsidiary. None of its 500-plus Irish jobs are at risk, but the paper move illustrates the staggering sums routed through shifting tax structures.

To understand how vulture fund Cerberus manages billions of euros’ worth of Irish assets, you must look to Baarn, a small town 45 minutes away from Amsterdam. From there, you will see just how the fund is managing to flatline its tax bill, a two-month investigation by The Currency can reveal.

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of electronic components has just invested another $1.5 billion in its Irish subsidiary and reported tax benefits dwarfing its actual profits for the second straight year. Could the two be related?