Mr. Michael Taft:

The effective tax rate is over 30%. We did not look at the nominal rate in our submission. You may be referring to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report. To be fair to PwC, the firm never portrayed the exercise as an exercise in comparing effective tax rates. PwC took one company, the now famous pottery company of 50 employees, which was non-trading and which would have been allowed the lower French rate. The French have two corporate rates, one for smaller businesses. Ireland used to have such a lower corporate tax rate. The Chairman asked about scrutiny. Apparently, there is increasing scrutiny. The EU Commission has launched an investigation into the tax practices of Luxembourg, Netherlands and Ireland.

The Netherlands has gone through a period of scrutinising itself and has started to renegotiate its double taxation treaties with other countries. The Finance Minister went so far as to apologise for allowing the country to be used as a tax conduit because he was very concerned by the reputational damage to the Netherlands.