What's RTE's beef with Denis O'Brien

silverharp

Listening to RTE radio breakfast news yesterday and they did a piece on Denis O'Brien giving money to the FAI. Anyway Brian Dobson I thinks starts off with D. O'B "Tax Exile" and later on makes the logically incorrect point that DOB "only" has money to give the FAI because he is a tax exile. This attitude by the RTE is so wrong on so many levels and I have to say the average tax payer should be more worried about the guilded conditions of state workers in organisations like the RTE as opposed to where some individual decides to reside or not.

bbop

Probably something to do with the fact he owns Today Fm and Newstalk!

jdivision

Write to the head of radio and complain. That might stop them.

donaghs

What's the main point exactly?

I think if we weren't all being taxed to pay for hospitals, roads, schools, and everything else we'd have a lot more money to play around with. Particularly people in the millionaire bracket.

flogen

silverharp wrote: »

Listening to RTE radio breakfast news yesterday and they did a piece on Denis O'Brien giving money to the FAI. Anyway Brian Dobson I thinks starts off with D. O'B "Tax Exile" and later on makes the logically incorrect point that DOB "only" has money to give the FAI because he is a tax exile. This attitude by the RTE is so wrong on so many levels and I have to say the average tax payer should be more worried about the guilded conditions of state workers in organisations like the RTE as opposed to where some individual decides to reside or not.

In what context did he say O'Brien only had money because he was a tax-exile - was it as a general statement to the listeners or was he putting it to a pro-O'Brien guest as a kind of question? It sounds to me like he could have been playing devil's advocate to elicit a reaction other than the scripted defence.

silverharp

donaghs wrote: »

What's the main point exactly?

I think if we weren't all being taxed to pay for hospitals, roads, schools, and everything else we'd have a lot more money to play around with. Particularly people in the millionaire bracket.

The point one is free to live where you want, you are absolutely entitled to move abroad for whatever reason and not be judged. I know people who spend half the year in Spain, does that make them climate exiles?

flogen wrote:

in what context did he say O'Brien only had money because he was a tax-exile - was it as a general statement to the listeners or was he putting it to a pro-O'Brien guest as a kind of question? It sounds to me like he could have been playing devil's advocate to elicit a reaction other than the scripted defence.

it was a question to the guest, so it could be devil's advocate, but still at best a lazy comment but to be honest its the kind of comment I'd expect from someone from the workers party with tongue firmly in cheek not from the national broadcaster.

constitutionus

theres 3 people in this country you can work for in the media. denis obrien, tony oreilly and the government.

so theyre taking a dig at the competition.

fact is obrien would be forking over a hell of alot more money than he's paying for trapatoni if he actually paid his taxes here,where he made the rump of said money. theres a school of thought out there that o brien is doing this to pump up his profile with the public, possibly to brighten it when he goes for a full scale takeover of the IN&M group . in that light its perfectly valid to say that he's a tax exile who doesnt contribute to ireland like , say , micheal o leary, and imply that not all of us get to choose what we spend our tax money on like him.:D

flogen

silverharp wrote: »

it was a question to the guest, so it could be devil's advocate, but still at best a lazy comment but to be honest its the kind of comment I'd expect from someone from the workers party with tongue firmly in cheek not from the national broadcaster.

If it was a question and an attempt at playing devil's advocate I wouldn't say it was lazy - the point of playing devil's advocate is to voice an opinion or theory that challenges the interviewee's assertion or forces their hand on a point.

In the case of broadcast journalism it can often be used to elicit the most entertaining reaction - which I think was probably the aim here (as even the least business-literate individual would accept it was a seriously flawed argument in any context and others would suggest that O'Brien's tax status has no bearing on his ability to donate to any organisation he chooses).

That said there is the point that O'Brien owns the country's only commercial national radio stations. Whether the viewpoint of O'Brien as "the enemy" has filtered down from boardroom to studio in RTÉ is hard to know, but it's certainly a valid theory, if not the one that I would subscribe to in this instance.

steve-o

On the subject of tax exiles, according to one school of thought, the super-rich may tend to be tax exiles, but in the long term they also tend to be extremely charitable. They also tend to be very careful about where their donations go and how they are spent. As a result, that money is extremely well spent and far more effectively used than if it was in the hands of a governement.

(I'm not trying to justify anything, but it is another way to think of it).

jdivision

Funny how the amount they donate never adds up to what they would have paid the State though. In reality a lot of that charitable giving is ego (funny how word of it always leaks out) and as far as I'm concerned an attempt to stop Revenue from clamping down with checks on how many days the tax exiles spend here.

donaghs

silverharp wrote: »

The point one is free to live where you want, you are absolutely entitled to move abroad for whatever reason and not be judged. I know people who spend half the year in Spain, does that make them climate exiles?

We can live whereever we want? Great, I'll just hop on a plane to the US today and live there for the rest of my life. Or is it that simple?

Certainly the Irish state doesn't restrict people leaving the country, which is a good thing. If tax exiles want to spend a lot of their time in the country in which they no longer pay tax, I think its understandable that the actual taxpayers might feel entitled to be a little annoyed. They may not be breaking a law, but some people see a moral issue here. And if enough people lobby, laws can be changed

steve-o wrote: »

On the subject of tax exiles, according to one school of thought, the super-rich may tend to be tax exiles, but in the long term they also tend to be extremely charitable. They also tend to be very careful about where their donations go and how they are spent. As a result, that money is extremely well spent and far more effectively used than if it was in the hands of a governement.
(I'm not trying to justify anything, but it is another way to think of it).

Its very hard to prove how much people give away, and if there is a net benefit of this situation. Basically, if we only payed as much tax as we wanted, to who we wanted - we would no longer have public services. Tax isn't popular (or efficient!), but it is necessary.

As for RTE, I'm sure they were just being a little provocative, trying to pique peoples interest - look at the way Jeremy Paxman interviews on the state-sponsored BBC!

silverharp

donaghs wrote: »

We can live whereever we want? Great, I'll just hop on a plane to the US today and live there for the rest of my life. Or is it that simple?

well I moved to the UK in the 90's partly because of high taxes here.

donaghs wrote: »

Certainly the Irish state doesn't restrict people leaving the country,
which is a good thing. If tax exiles want to spend a lot of their time in the country in which they no longer pay tax, I think its understandable that the actual taxpayers might feel entitled to be a little annoyed. They may not be breaking a law, but some people see a moral issue here. And if enough people lobby, laws can be changed

I think people see other people paying tax as a moral issue, when it comes to their own situation one pays the minimum one can legally do.

One thought comes to mind, does Michael Smurfit get the same grief?

monument

constitutionus wrote: »

theres 3 people in this country you can work for in the media. denis obrien, tony oreilly and the government.....

...add TCH, the Irish Times, the Mail group, and a few odd others and you're a bit closer to the truth (if the ever could be such a thing!).

DMC

And UTV (6 ILR's)