Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners

9:30 am

Photo of Michael NoonanMichael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think we can recoup. Section 110 of the 1997 Act was designed to make Dublin, in particular, but Ireland in general, attractive as a location for financial services. That was the intent of the section. The section was then misapplied on the advice of tax lawyers to property portfolios but as I said to Deputy McGrath it was not clear that was being done until approximately the autumn of 2015, and then there was a discussion about how widespread it was. The nature of tax avoidance measures that are brought up through the big tax advice companies and by tax advisers is that they are very secretive, and until the Revenue gets tax returns in and sees the data it is very hard to form an opinion. The loophole is blocked now and we think it will work. However, there will be an ongoing analysis of the effectiveness of the legislation we brought in last autumn.

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