Ireland's reliance on Corporation Tax receipts

Revenue data on CT payments:

2008 was a blip in fairness as recessions go. Most of Europe is already in serious budget deficit and .asking painful cuts all over.

We're not the only country offering incentives to these giant corporations but they choose to come and stay. Wouldn't be overly concerned about some hypothetical.

the issue is we are nearly all welfare recipients in this country: children's allowance, energy credits, free school books, free dinners, all sorts of grants to unviable SMEs, agriculture, double double allowances … etc etc … the gravy being doled out is across society, we are nearly all in it … what went on in the recent budget is repeating the mistakes of the past … remember this is a right of centre government, imagine it was a bunch of left wingers ….

You are wrong there it's definitely not a right of centre government, all governments in Ireland have been essentially leftist and socialist even more so in the last decade. Probably the only time we possibly had a centrist government was during the celtic tiger ,at least then the tax burden on workers was reduced making it more worthwhile to work which explains why we were able to build all those houses back then ( yes we built too many ) now the government reluctantly gives tax cuts but all the spending is on welfare payments, that is a socialist not right wing policy. Therefore people are not prepared to work on building sites etc like 20 years ago as the government is creaming off too much tax from middle income workers and making work less attractive

I just find it mad that the the nationdebt is €234 billion now

In 2008 it was about €40 billion.

Whenever I raise this online people reply that it doesn't matter it's only national debt but if there was ever a systemic shock, who would be willing to loan us another €200 billion?

A lot of politicians being blamed and in fairness they are a bunch of self centred cowards.

But, any political party preaching prudence and long term planning would be decimated in an election here.

It’s the electorate that are the real problem in this country.

The politicians are simply a reflection of our own shortcomings.

We haven’t learned a thing from the last recession and we deserve everything that’s coming down the tracks.

…this is not exactly like the lead up to the 08 crash, but it is similar in ways, again, the main reason for that crash was our over reliance on credit which of course fueled a property boom, yes we re still doing this today, but we re some what protected by the fact, a significant proportion of this debt has now been institutionalised by major investors, which of course is still helping to cause a property boom, along with our serious supply problems of course. if any of these investors were to go bust, theyd very likely be bailed out, so nothing to really worrying about there….

yes we re exposed by being heavily dependent on corporate taxes, but its less likely that ll dry up anytime soon, this was always our long term plan anyway, when we opened up to such investment, so, its working….

…so thank god for the surplus, and plough on with the spending, but spend it wisely, just bloody stop giving property buyers more money to speculate in property markets(first time buyers), and use it to bloody build them!

…get cracking with investing in our long term infrastructure needs!

The policy of attracting and retaining foreign multinationals, though it yields a lot of tax, is damaging to our society in a similar way that an abundance of oil (or some other resource) is damaging to many third-world societies. It creates a top-heavy economy which stifles local creativity and enterprise. In addition it makes rents unaffordable for local people.

It is certainly true that at one point we needed FDI and the more the better at that point in time. But just because it was the correct policy at one point in our history does not mean that it is always the correct policy. This is where I think we are going wrong in the country. We persist with policies that once made sense even after they have stopped making sense are are now damaging.

I'm not saying drive out all foreign multinationals by the way. But more multinationals on top of what we have is not the correct way forward.

You can't blame the state for continuing to chase FDI or building on what is there. You can however blame the state for housing policy and everything that goes on around it or the lack of investment and/or poor investment decisions that have happened over the last number of decades.

So you'd don't believe it is currently a good thing to support whatever FDI is here or try entice further FDI into the country? Is that essentially what you are advocating?

I really don't get knocking the FDI angle. Broadening the tax base is one of the ways to reduce the reliance on it, however as an electorate we aren't too big on that and as for the indigenous agri and tourism industries that many say are not being supported on this thread....where exactly is tourism and agri not being supported?

If we didn't have the multinationals, we would almost certainly be considerably less well off and have less money in our pockets - more of a mid ranking European country, like a Czechia or a Finland or somebody.

So there's a touch of swings and roundabouts about it all. If we didn't have the multinationals and the corporation tax, we would be far less exposed to a possible future financial crash for sure - but we wouldn't necessarily be doing all that well either.

Regardless of how dependent we are on MNC’s in Ireland, shouldn’t we be trying to develop another stream of revenue for the state- just in case?

For example shouldn’t we be building all the wind farms off the west coast so that they are state owned, we can then sell excess wind to the European grid, so that private companies aren’t making the money off it?

It was actually quite interesting to hear Trump on rogan talking about Apple in Europe and the need for America to reduce the corpoarte tax rate to 15% to bring home profits. On the other hand Harris will raise it to 28%.

Also another interesting item is one of the main people raising this issue over the last number of years is Brad Setser who who has published numerous articles on it and ultimately ended up with a job in the Biden administration and then acheived nothing. It had some clear reforms proposed in his articles in the cfr. Ultimately the lobbyists always win.

Far more likely is the US taking a radical change to stop offshoring of profits related to Intellectual property (IP).

This is how so much corporate tax is paid in Ireland - IP is moved to Irish based companies and all revenue derived from said IP is then taxed here, so it doesn't get taxed elsewhere.

All US have to do is say they do not recognise this tax arrangement any longer. - close the loophole and then all IP tax will be paid there instead since that's where most of the IP is created