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

Estimates have been put on the amount of tax Apple would have to pay back in the event of an adverse ruling. The signals are that the European Commission believes we engaged in state aid in making special deals with companies such as Apple in order for them to avoid paying tax. I believe that to be the case, as do many others. That is why there is an investigation. The upper estimates of how much tax was forgone in respect of one company suggest it could be as much as €19 billion. We are in an extraordinary situation in which the Government does not want that money. If I were the Minister of State I would be chasing that money, but he is sitting back and saying "We will see what happens," and "There is nothing to see here," when we could be talking about as much as €19 billion.

Let us look at the serious estimates of the effective tax rates. The Government refers to a figure of an effective rate of 10.9%, which is laughable, because it is after the deductions to which I referred, namely, trade and charges, which is how companies write down their taxable income. Any serious analysis of the profits being made by those companies would start with their gross trading profits at least, if not their total income. Then one gets a very different picture. One gets an effective tax rate of approximately 6.2%, which roughly coincides with EUROSTAT’s estimate. EUROSTAT's estimate of our effective tax rate is 5.9% for 2012. As we know, the United States Congress estimated that the companies that are in the eye of this storm, the big players, are paying a rate of 2.2%. Every time figures about their profits or revenues come out, that is borne out. We had the extraordinary revelation recently that Google made €18 billion in revenue last year and paid €28.6 million in tax. I calculate that rate to be less than 1%. That is what is going on. Everybody knows it. I believe the Government knows it and that Revenue is aware of it, but it is being actively facilitated. The knowledge development box is the new mechanism to facilitate the process. I am sure the Minister of State will try to tell me that is not true.