Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Seamus Coffey and thank him for his presentation. I wish to raise a few points on which he might elaborate. Regarding the data in his summary report and this is a question I have asked him previously, is there a genuine comparator available of corporation tax paid and raised? Is there a genuine comparator available with other countries, particularly countries with regional government structures such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany, where the tax structure tends to be much more complicated than ours, which is the reason it often adds up to a very high rate but there may well be a great deal of regional investment in attracting foreign direct investment? That is obvious in Italy where they are going out of their way, as Mr. Coffey will be aware, to attract and compete with countries that are attracting social media and related companies, and that is tied into their view of what this levy might be. Is such a comparator available?

In terms of the graph on the second page of Mr. Coffey's presentation, I must confess I do not understand it. I am trying to pick out which country is which. I know Ireland is the big green one on the bottom of the graph. I note from that graph and the subsequent table detailing the net operating surplus of the non-financial corporations, bearing in mind what Mr. Coffey said earlier, that in the context of Ireland, for example, Luxembourg, the City of London and a number of other points in Europe have an enormous specialisation in finance capital of a very advanced and varied kind. Why then, is the financial sector omitted from this chart? Does that omission lead to some difficulties in terms of what one might call summary data from different countries and how they are rated? In that context, I wish to make a specific point which I have raised previously.

We have an unique situation where very significant parts of the financial sector, particularly the larger banks, lots of other financial institutions and a good part of the property development and construction sectors have significant loses being carried forward from the crash. The Revenue Commissioners gave me figures two years ago which the Committee of Public Accounts has been using again recently. The same figures were given to this committee by the then assistant Revenue Commissioner at that time. These figures from Revenue show that highly significant amounts of losses were carried forward. That means for those companies such as Bank of Ireland and AIB - just to pick the well known ones - as well as lots of others, that effectively there will be no tax payable by choice by some of the largest banks, and construction and property firms as well, for a long number of years. Let us bear in mind, a previous response that essentially this is a timing difference as opposed necessarily to a tax levying difference. In the here and now AIB and Bank of Ireland between them will have well over a billion euro in profit which otherwise would be taxable. Effectively from all the data I have seen, they are going to be able to choose whether they pay any corporation tax. Many people would understand this to be a scandal. I do understand the technical answer that this is a timing issue.

This is part of the loss of reputation of Ireland in terms of fairness of tax, in that somebody on PAYE has no choice about when he or she pays tax. It is levied on such people's income as it arises, whereas these banks can put off the evil day for a very long time. Does Mr. Coffey think this is damaging to the reputation of Ireland in terms of the current debates and discussions on tax? That is why I think a minimum effective tax rate, particularly in respect of financial services companies, is appropriate. I note Mr. Coffey's comments about the minimum effective rates. However some companies are paying nothing and will be paying nothing for a long time. Will Mr. Coffey share his views on that?

I was going to ask him about when the proposed tax changes by President Trump will come into effect? Mr. Coffey may be able to send some more information on that to the secretariat of the committee.

Arising from their work, do Mr. Coffey or his group have information on the number of disputed assessments against some of the major corporations? I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister for Finance on the issue. There seems to be very limited auditing of some of these companies. From the graphs provided, one gets the impression that certain sectors are in a different position for reasons of complexity or just the sheer size of them. Is that the case? There seems to be a number of settlements being made-----