Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The double Irish was a massive tax avoidance scheme by the multinationals which centred, to a large extent, on the way in which they could charge for the intellectual property rights of subsidiary companies which were tax resident nowhere and, consequently, avoid paying billions of euro in tax. Is the patent box not exactly the same because it centres on intellectual property? It is about offering further tax reductions to corporations here which pay some of the lowest levels of tax anywhere in the world. Yet again, they will be able to avoid corporation tax through this mechanism. Is this not replacing one tax avoidance scheme with another? It was reported last week that the Minister's Department was working with multinational companies and that, when in the United States, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, had met 17 leading multinationals to reassure them that the patent box scheme would not in any way penalise them in terms of having to pay a little more in tax. Is that true? Is this fair when ordinary people are being absolutely hammered?

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