Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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A company has to pay income tax on its rent. REITs do not. A company has capital gains tax to pay but REITs do not. They have to distribute a certain portion of their income or of their proceeds. The structure of this is the investors are foreign investors and, therefore, are only subject to dividend withholding tax that in some cases they are reducing to close to zero. This is why we are discussing the issue of what the dividend withholding tax rate should be because we are dealing with this part in isolation. The Minister mentioned we are dealing with what the appropriate rate of capital gains tax is but I would like him to clarify for me if he is suggesting that he will apply capital gains tax to a normally functioning REIT.