Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Three cheers for that perspective. I could not agree more with Professor Stewart. We make one law for domestic industries and another for multinationals in the area of tax liability. Does this also apply to the taxes registered in Ireland, for example, those on the Department’s tables which show a pre-tax profit of €70 billion and €4 billion paid in tax? There is some debate about how the effective rate applies to this as well. I would calculate tax paid as a proportion of gross profit, which shows an effective rate of 6.4% whereas others maintain it is much closer to 12.5% because there are deductions and allowances and so on. How would Professor Stewart compare that with the treatment of the ordinary pay as you earn, PAYE, taxpayer? Is the effective rate calculated in a much more favourable way for companies than for the ordinary taxpayer who does not get a lot of allowances, reductions and write-offs before the tax liability is decided?