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

This scandal over Apple's tax affairs and, as we have stressed in our motion, those of a small, select group of multinationals in this country reveals the true schism in Irish politics. We have witnessed it today in the Dáil. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party closed ranks to protect the interests of one of the wealthiest multinationals in the world which is engaged in massive tax evasion and was using this country as a base for that tax evasion. In the process, it was robbing the citizens of this country of billions in revenue that they desperately need to resolve a housing and homelessness emergency, a dire crisis in our health service and an incredible deficit in investment in vital infrastructure, whether water, schools or other facilities. The money could create tens of thousands of well-paid jobs for those who need them. However, the establishment has banded together to continue the cover-up, say "No" to the money and protect the tax-dodging activities of Apple and, as we suggest, other multinationals which have also availed of the tax scams the establishment has worked to create and protect. I do not believe the establishment has any intention of truly phasing those out.

The scale of the cover-up and the hypocrisy I have listened to in the House is extraordinary. I was on the finance committee in 2013 when it was not very popular, notwithstanding the fact that we are often accused of being populist, to go against the consensus that we dare not talk about our corporation tax rate. The reality is that it lost us votes because we had the courage to say something was wrong with our corporate tax system and to campaign on that basis. As a result, we forced a sort of examination of the corporation tax system, with the establishment of a sub-committee to carry that out. The first item on the agenda was the establishment closing ranks to ensure that we did not get to the bottom of the scandal that has now exploded. I tabled a motion asking that Apple, Google, Facebook and others be brought before that sub-committee to answer questions in the same way they had been in the US Senate and the British Parliament. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and some Independents closed ranks and voted that motion down. Not only did they do that, they also did something else which has not come out. Before the motion was put to the committee, which chaired by a member of the Labour Party, another motion was tabled that the debate be heldin cameraby switching off the cameras, so that the public did not get to see even the fact that we were debating the possibility of bringing Apple, Google and Facebook in to answer questions. How much of a cover-up is that? It was absolutely extraordinary. The Labour Party, which says now, incredibly, that it is converted to the idea of an effective tax rate, was not in favour of it when we were pushing it for the last five years, and in fact dismissed it as fantasy economics and an imaginary pot of gold that did not exist. However, it did and does exist, and Europe has exposed what we have been saying as true.

The Government has been caught out, but it continues with the obfuscation, lies and myths in order to throw people off the scent. First, the Government claimed we could not spend the €13 billion, but was quickly shot down by the EU, which said we could spend it. It would fundamentally transform the lives of huge numbers of our citizens, particularly the most vulnerable. It was claimed that it would endanger foreign direct investment and that the multinationals would run out. That was nonsense quickly nailed by Tim Cook. It is not the case that these guys can just run away or even would run away from the billions in profit that they are making. Even if they had to pay the 12.5% rate, they would be paying far less, in reality, than they would pay in most jurisdictions across Europe. That is not good enough for them, however. They want to pay virtually nothing and we facilitated that. That we have closed down the loopholes and that this is a legacy issue is another myth. We have not. Again, this is something we cried foul on, but the double Irish is not gone. It is still available to Apple, Google and Facebook now because it will continue until 2020. We do not know and cannot get the figures from the Revenue Commissioners to find out whether the double Irish is still being operated.

If it is, we must decide how to calculate Apple's tax for this year and subsequent years. The answer is approximately €1 billion, €2 billion or more per year in revenue available not from the past, but in the future that would make a major difference to our budget and our capacity to invest in housing and alleviate the hardships that so many of our citizens are suffering.

I wish to address the integrity of our tax system. The laughable suggestion is that we must lodge the appeal in order to defend its integrity. The first of the tax rulings was in 1991, the era of Ansbacher and Charlie Haughey. Via Ansbacher accounts, the Irish rich had been siphoning off money that was onshore but supposedly offshore since 1971. Only political pressure, outrage and exposure, not Revenue, forced the establishment of the McCracken tribunal. It was only in 1999 that Revenue finally decided to start investigating the matter and uncovering the funds. Is our tax system so covered in glory that we would not question its integrity? I am afraid not.

The tax ruling of 2007 is what I really want to discuss. Something was raised at the committee about which we were not allowed to ask questions of Apple and Facebook because the Government side turned off the cameras and voted down the proposal. A paper produced by the Department of Finance, authored by Mr. Seamus Coffey, showed some of the figures. Nobody bothered to read them, as is so often the case, but the truth is in them. I refer our economic and political correspondents to pages 27 and 28 of the Department's paper on Ireland's effective corporate tax rates. They show something incredible. The average amount of what are called deductions - parts of companies' profits that can be written off from their tax liabilities as costs - jumped from an average of approximately €2 billion in 2004 and 2005 to €21 billion in 2011. God knows what they were subsequently, as we do not have the figures and cannot get them from Revenue for four or five years after the fact, which is another scandal. The amount of tax at 12.5% that these companies could write off jumped over four or five years by €19 billion. The greatest jump in that write-off came after the 2007 ruling, when it increased from €6 billion to €19 billion before increasing to €21 billion within a year or two. It may well have increased much more afterwards but we do not have those figures. We need to see them. From 2007, total taxable income in the corporate sector dropped from €56 billion to €37 billion. That nearly €20 billion is almost exactly the same as the deductions allowed. The paper helpfully mentions that this can be explained by patent royalties paid by certain multinationals to their subsidiaries. The ruling gave them certainty that they would be allowed to write their own tax bills indefinitely. The Government colluded to cover this up until now.

The paper that the Government distributed last night and that is also a part of the cover up helpfully tells us about a few points. In 1991, a basis proposed by Apple for determining the net profits of Apple Computers Accessories, now the ASI branch, was agreed by Revenue. Apple told Revenue that it had a proposal on how the latter should calculate its profits. It did that again in 2007. Does any other taxpayer get the opportunity to tell Revenue how to calculate his or her tax bill? I do not think so. This is the Government that will deduct unjust property taxes from people's wages if they do not pay. This is the Government that will send police out against anti-water charges protestors because they are unable or unwilling to pay unjust water charges. This is the Government that inflicts the brutal austerity imposed by the troika to pay off the gambling debts of banks and financial speculators regardless of the hardship suffered by ordinary people. When it comes to Apple, Google and Facebook, however, we protect them and they can make their own tax arrangements. This is what happened. No arm's length principle, no equality, no tax justice. They tell Revenue how to calculate their tax and Revenue does it.

Please do not tell me that, when the allowable deductions from profits jump by approximately €18 billion or €19 billion in two or three years, the Government and Revenue did not notice or that the Government did not know that these profits were being shifted to companies that had tax residencies nowhere in the world. It did not know that. Come off it. Everybody knew that they were involved in massive tax evasion but we chose to turn a blind eye and, indeed, to put in place the mechanisms that allowed them to do it. We then resisted the calls to close down that loophole. The Government now claims that it has done so but it has given a sunset clause under which the same companies and no other can avail of the double Irish until 2020. In the meantime, the Government has developed a patent box that will allow them to do the same thing in a different way, that is, write off the profits generated from upgrading an iPhone or Apple computer against the cost of new innovations and developing new patents. We are saying, "No".

Apple is appealing, so we will not be able to spend the money anyway, but how much weaker would Apple's case be if the Government accepted the ruling because it was true that we had done something wrong? Everyone knows that we gave selective advantage to these corporations. I have just provided the hard evidence contained in Revenue's tables, which show that Revenue must have known. If it and the Government did not notice this scale of profit shifting, they should be flung out on their ears. Of course they noticed it. If we put up our hands and admit that this was wrong and that, as everyone knows, these companies were evading tax to the tune of billions of euro, Apple's case against the European Commission would collapse. Maybe Apple would pursue it, maybe it would not, but its case would be significantly weakened if we did the honest and fair thing from the point of view of our citizens.

Let me address the point that we are just critics and exploiters of problems.

In the context of this motion, and persistently on every single budget, we have said what we believe is the alternative. This proves it was not a fantasy. We must tax the corporations and the super-wealthy that have consistently been protected. The money involved - for which we now actually have figures, although it is the tip of the iceberg when one includes the Facebooks, the Googles, the LinkedIns and all the rest of them - should be used to invest in developing green jobs and our national resources. The Taoiseach said we do not have many national resources; we actually have a hell of lot of them. That money should be used to build the social and affordable housing we need. It should be used to invest in our health service, our universities and the arts which are starved of funding. We could create tens of thousands of jobs which would not be based on facilitating these greedy multinationals whose activities are robbing the European Union and its citizens of €1 trillion a year. These multinationals are the single biggest contributory factor to global inequality, which is rising to obscene levels.

What I have outlined would be an honourable, honest and decent thing to do. However, this Government just wants to maintain the cover-up and waste more taxpayers’ money fighting to defend the interests of the super-rich tax-dodging elites in this country and across the world.

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