Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 70:

In page 82, between lines 29 and 30, to insert the following: “Report on restoring cap on intangible assets

34.The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on restoring the 80 per cent cap on intangible assets onshored between 2015 and 2017 that can be written off against profits at the rate of 100 per cent.”.

This is the report on intangible assets. We have discussed this on numerous occasions at the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach since Seamus Coffey produced his report and acknowledged that there was a change around the taxation of intangible assets that were onshored. That change only applied to intangible assets that were onshored from the date the change took effect. Seamus Coffey had argued for, and it was his intention in the report and subsequently as the author of the report on behalf of the Department of Finance, that all intangible assets should be taxed regardless of when they were brought onshore. This is not an issue of retrospective taxation because it is not the case that we would look back to tax and claw back the money from intangible assets onshored before the date as in the Finance Bill two years ago. It is not that. It is about applying the tax to intangible assets that companies would use this year or next year to reduce their tax liability, and that should not be allowed. The tax should apply in the same way it applies for intangible assets that were onshored last year.

Again, the mechanism we have here is to look for a report on this issue. This is not a minor issue. It is a tax measure that was argued for by the expert person who was commissioned by the Department of Finance to report on this, and who has done other work on behalf of the Department on corporation tax. This brings in €750 million per annum. There is a strong argument for a piece of work to be done on this. I would like to see it enacted in the Finance Bill this year, but at the very minimum I would like a commitment from the Government to look at this issue again to consider the pros and cons of giving effect to what the author of the report had intended in the first place.