For years, the double Irish scheme siphoned multinationals’ profits to offshore islands. Now their intellectual property makes half of all corporate profits in Ireland tax-deductible. Ahead of the budget, new data and analysis reveal what drives the corporation tax bonanza.
There is little to no economic logic for giving tax breaks to landlords, and the people who need help – those providing new supply and those in rental accommodation – can be helped in other, more targeted ways.
Alan Moore has been a tax official, a tax adviser, a tax educator, a tax writer, and now, at a time when most people of his age are retiring, an entrepreneur. He talks about tax scams, raising funds, and the future of accountancy.
The tax authority stopped its enforcement activity during he pandemic. However, it has been building up its debt cases again over the past 18 months, as evidenced by new data analysing Revenue’s activities over the past five years.
Through a HQ inversion, the US-listed medical manufacturer Covidien was liable to pay tax in Ireland but Revenue rejected hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of expenses it had claimed as deductible.
When Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, it routed profits through an Irish company tax-resident in the Cayman Islands. It has settled part of the resulting dispute before the US Tax Court.
No one likes taxes but everyone wants a larger state. What’s the smallest larger state we’ll need?
Today’s study by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council warns of public finances’ reliance on a handful of large corporate taxpayers, especially the top three. The report doesn’t name them, but The Currency can.
We can now see the full-year effect of the software multinational’s green jersey structure. Multi-billlion-dollar intellectual property located in Dublin has erased its corporation tax bills for years to come.
By taking its state aid dispute with Ireland all the way to the EU’s top court, the European Commission wants to clarify how it can investigate tax breaks for multinationals into the future.
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