Ireland Changed Tax Strategy for Tech Giants

[Atreides]

Apparently, Irish Finance Minister is committed to a crackdown on multinational corporations’ big business tax avoidance. As a result, Apple and Google will be affected first.
 

At the moment, the Irish government remains under pressure to do something about its low corporation tax rate. The matter is that its tax strategy made the country very popular with tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google. Finance Minister has promised that the 12.5% tax rate wouldn’t be touched, and revealed a new plan which is supposed to prevent big businesses from being “stateless†for tax purposes. The government confirmed that they have a statement on international tax strategy in Budget 2014, which would set out the country’s objectives and commitments on global tax and avoidance issues. Finance Minister announced they are going to include a reform to make sure that no Irish registered entity can be stateless for tax purposes.

Apparently, the country has been under a fair bit of pressure for a while. For example, Germany claimed they would have to bail out the Irish economy when it is ignoring pots of gold from the likes of Google and Apple. Of course, the people are also unhappy that they are expected to be austere and lose government services while tech giants are making millions. However, the new rules for “stateless†entities will only apply from January 2015, so tech giants will have plenty of time to find a new tax haven.