Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Joint Sub-Committee on Global Corporate Taxation

Assessment of Measures Relating to Corporation Tax in Ireland: Discussion

2:30 pm

Ms Cora O'Brien:

That opinion concurs with what we are hearing everywhere. We were at a UK business conference a couple of weeks ago which was attended by various UK Government speakers. They had just come back from the west coast of the United States where they had been actively and proudly selling the United Kingdom's tax offering to bring projects to the United Kingdom. At the conference a report by Ernst & Young was quoted setting out details of 60 projects in the previous 18 months won by the United Kingdom on the back of its corporate tax strategy which it is driving in a very focused way. Those 60 projects are ones someone else did not win and it could have been us in the case of a number of them. We are in the same space to attract this business. It is an issue and the United Kingdom has a clear strategy, including the patent box. It has reduced its corporate tax rate to 20% and has a Treasury company rate of 5%. It changed the rules to exempt foreign dividends and there is an election to exempt foreign branch income. It is going very hard after this market.

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