Google to finish the double Irish Dutch sandwich

It's still very beneficial for them to be here. And don't worry about Brexit, Britain can't afford to lower its general corporate taxation rates low enough to compete with us, it would hit the exchequer income from their extensive indigenous sectors too hard.

seamus wrote: »

As said above, the tax bonusses of locating in Ireland were really just a cherry on top for these larger multinationals.

Some companies were here just for tax reasons - I worked for a company once that said it wouldn't be here if it weren't for the tax loopholes. It collapsed not long after.

But Google has over 7,000 people in Ireland, Apple 6,000, Amazon 3,500. Our tax rates in general are still a good draw, but our position as an English-speaking country in the EU is a massive one. And becomes more and more important as the UK moves to leave.

So they're not going anywhere for now. We need to sort out our property crisis though as a matter of urgency.

Its near the top of the pile if not the top that would stumble and hamper our growth. Rents being too mad for companies to relocate here.

We have an odd predicament of having ample office space but no where to house employees

beggars_bush wrote: »

Where is all this office space?

Up and down the Quays, Across the city, West Dublin, South Dublin, Sandyford.

Office space a plenty.


Have you been around Dublin recently ? For Lease signs everywhere.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

What's the vacancy rate for office space at the moment?

No idea where would you get up to date figures that a real ?

You'd walk past a huge amount of post 2000 Stock of Office space completely vacant across the city. Alot of bigger players are in centralising and consolidation mode currently. building boutique solutions for their wide spread staff. This in itself is leaving large units vacant.

listermint wrote: »

No idea where would you get up to date figures that a real ?

You'd walk past a huge amount of post 2000 Stock of Office space completely vacant across the city. Alot of bigger players are in centralising and consolidation mode currently. building boutique solutions for their wide spread staff. This in itself is leaving large units vacant.

Empty office space may not be the right office space.

Different to saying there is over supply. There is under supply if existing stock is not even considered anymore because it's out dated.

What is being constructed and leased/bought is the right space for the market.

tech companys need offices in the eu,
they have to comply with gdpr, we speak english.
With brexit happening it makes ireland even more attractive .
ireland has laws favorable to tech companys, its not just the low tax.s .
The irs american tax administration , is sueing facebook for billions saying they are avoiding paying tax by saying profits are made by facebook ireland.
Certain area,s are zoned for office,s or business , it might be difficult to take over an old office and zone it for residential to allow people
to live there .
Its going to be hard to attract new companys to dublin in the future since we are in a housing crisis ,rents are high, theres a shortage of high quality rental units .

beggars_bush wrote: »

Where is all this office space?

Conor McCabe did a wee tour of them a few years ago. There are probably lots more now. Starts around 15 mins.

lastusername wrote: »

Why don't the government try to buy up some of this empty office space and convert it into houses or apartments, provided the supporting infrastructure is there?

The short answer is that offices and houses are built to different standards of safety, energy, noise insulation, height, etc.

In order to convert a standard office space to accommodation that complies with the planning regs, it would probably be cheaper as Peregrinus says, to knock and rebuild. Whatever about the little offices above a row of shops, a commercial office block doesn't lend itself well to permanent housing.

seamus wrote: »

As said above, the tax bonusses of locating in Ireland were really just a cherry on top for these larger multinationals.

Some companies were here just for tax reasons - I worked for a company once that said it wouldn't be here if it weren't for the tax loopholes. It collapsed not long after.

But Google has over 7,000 people in Ireland, Apple 6,000, Amazon 3,500. Our tax rates in general are still a good draw, but our position as an English-speaking country in the EU is a massive one. And becomes more and more important as the UK moves to leave.

So they're not going anywhere for now. We need to sort out our property crisis though as a matter of urgency.

To be fair, part of the reason they have such high numbers of employees here is because of the Double Irish. The agreements with these companies includes that they show that a certain amount of work is being done in Ireland. Even with these high numbers of employees it’s still a massive saving overall.
When you consider that when they could right off 100% of intellectual property (now being reduced to 80%), even if each employee cost them €150k, Apple would only have to pay €900m on profits work multiples of that. This equates to a very small percentage in real terms so is definitely worth it

greenfield21 wrote: »

Facebook has saved billions in tax by locating to ireland. Anybody who think these tech and pharma companies are here for any reason other than tax are deluded. I'm not against it either.

Anyone who thinks it's solely based on the tax system solely.

Is equally deluded and knows nothing of business or setting up in business friendly location's.

Angie Tall Back wrote: »

Chicken or the egg, fish or the whale. What difference does it make?

A huge difference when a slight change to tax laws could see tens of thousands of high paid jobs up sticks and move elsewhere.

dubrov wrote: »

That's not really an argument.

Facebook/Google are highly profitable companies with relatively low labour costs.
It is hardly surprising they seek to minimise their tax base even at the cost of higher salaries

Where did I say they didn't ?

Or is that your argument putting words in my mouth

Good article on it here what next though can't see why link is dead

dubrov wrote: »

Exactly. The workforce is completely mobile and they could move anywhere in Europe and pretty much the same people would work there.

A lot of the work Google do here is localisation and sales. The fact English is the main language here is irrelevant for these roles.

It's actually not totally irrelevant because those roles require multilingual talents, usually native speakers. So, if I want to concentrate my sales team, full of native speakers of foreign languages, I need to be able to attract them to my location. English is by far the most widely spoken second language. If I set up shop in a country where my staff cannot interact with the local bureaucracy, I may struggle to find people willing to work for me.

You can probably squeeze by in a limited subset of EU countries like the Netherlands but in France or Bulgaria or Greece I suspect you can forget about getting the local ISP to communicate with you in English! Even here in Germany they might find someone who will speak to you in English but nothing in writing. It will all be in German.

There are other countries in the EU with lower corporation taxes than us but they are not poaching jobs from us.

Similarly Ireland has a strong legal system, built on English common law. That is hugely attractive to US companies especially, where the same legal foundation exists (almost everywhere).

The tax situation helps but it isn't the only thing. We are physically closer to the US. I often wonder should we move time zone by 1 hour to give us an extra hour's overlap with the US and Canada. I suspect if there was no land border with the UK we would have already done that. Losing one hour overlap with the UK and EU should be worth it IMO.