Full coverage: Tax

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.

Farm incorporation theory is rock solid from a tax perspective. However, a farming father and son have been left with a huge tax bill after routing their Single Farm Payment through their personal accounts, not those of their company.

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?

When it sold down its investment in Irish toll roads, Ferrovial was hit with an unexpected CGT bill. Five years on, the company has won a tax appeal with far-reaching implications for foreign direct investment.

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.

Fexco scion John McCarthy, his family and colleagues are in line for a €165 million windfall from the sale of their company Taxamo. They have successfully capitalised on the combined effects of the boom in online shopping, Brexit and an EU crackdown on Vat evasion.

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.

Case law has been trickling down from a 2018 EU dispute on the role of the Workplace Relations Commission, with deep implications for the powers of the Tax Appeals Commission. The latest score is 2-1 in favour of such state bodies, with a lot to play for.

New transactions reveal how the American computer infrastructure giant has consolidated all profits made outside the US in an unassuming Dublin business park – without fully giving up on zero-tax jurisdictions.