Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My view is that the BEPS process has a long way to go and we are some way of running out of road. Interestingly, the most recent set of US corporate tax changes contained a number of features that were strongly related to BEPS. In the recent paper I published on corporate tax reform, I outlined work that needs to be done across the next two to three Finance Bills to implement a BEPS process in our tax code.

We have an amount of work to do with regard to this. The next area to which we must move for next year concerns our transfer pricing rules.

With regard to our engagement with the Commission, I and my Department receive ongoing inquiries from the Commission regarding an array of different matters. This is a constant area of engagement with the Commission so, yes, we are in ongoing contact with it but any inquiries it has declared or anything that is ongoing are in the public domain and Deputy Burton will be aware of them. The most significant one is the Apple investigation.

With regard to Deputy Boyd Barrett's question, Article 12 deals with the artificial avoidance of permanent established status. This means that a proposed new test in Article 12 looks at how much presence a company must have in a country before it has to pay corporation tax. It provides that an enterprise of one country is deemed to have a permanent establishment in another country if it operates through a dependent agent in that other country. I am not saying that we will not sign up to it. I have met Christian Aid on this and I can see the role it could play in the future either on a bilateral level or through the OECD. However, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding how it would be implemented and a lot of jurisdictions with which we have significant trade have not yet implemented it. I will keep it under review. I am not ruling out the possibility of it forming a part of our tax code in the future but until I see how it is implemented and until I see a number of other countries participate in it, I think it would be too early for Ireland to move to implement it.