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

I move amendment No. 39:

In page 41, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:

"(3) The Minister shall, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, bring a report on the amount of tax revenue foregone as a result of the changes to capital allowances relating to intangible assets made in budget 2014 and the re-introduction of the 80 per cent cap in such allowances in Budget 2018, the reasons for the Budget 2014 changes and the additional revenue that would be generated by applying the 80 per cent cap for the time prior to 11 October 2017 where the allowance was 100 per cent.".

This is again an amendment which is of considerable importance to the people of this country. It is directly related to the scandal of the €13 billion Apple case. It turns what is already an enormous scandal around that €13 billion of tax that Apple should have paid but did not pay, which the Government still does not want to collect, but now we discover, courtesy of the so-called Paradise Papers that in regard to the double Irish tax scam which our tax code facilitated to the tune of €13 billion in lost taxes to the people of this country, the real figure of losses may be far greater.

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The reason for that is the phasing out of the double Irish was indicated as being likely to happen from the end of 2013 onwards because of political pressure in the House. The pressure was primarily from the left, including from ourselves and Sinn Féin, and externally from people raging about tax avoidance by multinationals as well as from growing international opprobrium about the scams of these multinationals to rob ordinary people of billions in tax revenue. That revenue could have gone into housing, health and education, especially at a time of austerity.

We discovered that the so-called closing of the double Irish tax scam was simply a prelude to the opening of another tax scam to benefit Apple and a few other extraordinarily wealthy corporations. The narrative and chronology is well worth setting out. In July 2013 Joe Higgins, Deputy Pearse Doherty and I and some others were the only people who wanted Apple brought in, along with Facebook and Google, to appear before the Joint Sub-committee on Global Taxation. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and some Independents who were on the committee closed ranks. They said that the committee would not bring in representatives from those companies to ask questions about the double Irish. Not only that, incredibly they turned off the cameras when we were discussing the matter. There was an unprecedented decision to have the discussion in camerain private session to discuss whether the companies should come in and when a vote would be taken on whether they should come in. Such was the degree of servility of the entire political establishment in the face of Apple when the rumours about the scale of the double Irish were abounding and being articulated by some of us in the committee.

When we roll the clock on, the scale of the double Irish tax scam becomes clear, as does the likelihood that the Government would be forced into agreeing to close down the loophole. The then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, scurried over to a private meeting with the chief executive of Apple in January 2014. He admitted on the record when questioned by us after that meeting that corporation tax was discussed. I would dearly like to see the minutes of those meetings or the recording of those meetings to learn what was discussed.

We know now, thanks to the paradise papers, that in March, shortly after that meeting, lawyers acting on behalf of Apple started to contact Appleby. The legal firm specialises in tax avoidance for big corporations. Apple contacted the legal firm's subsidiaries in March 2014 in the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. They are all tax havens where there is no corporate tax. Apple settled on Jersey. The legal firm acting on behalf of Apple asked whether the jurisdiction in question could confirm that an Irish company could conduct management activities without been subject to taxation in that jurisdiction. Apple was busy reconfiguring the tax scam and using its Irish companies because of the possibility of the double Irish being closed down. The then Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, went over and met Apple representatives later in the year. We had a debate at the committee on the 2014 budget. At the debate I suggested, to much ridicule from the Government, that the much trumpeted double Irish will, in fact, be replaced by another scheme through which the same companies will be able to avoid pretty much the same amount of taxes but in a slightly different way by speaking about patents and intellectual property rights.

I did not know how right I was. The scam was already being planned. The replacement of the double Irish was already being engineered by the Government and Apple. How else can the Minister explain the extraordinary coincidence of Apple not paying a single extra cent of tax after the closing of the double Irish, the reconfiguration of its subsidiaries to Jersey and the interaction allowing them to pay no tax? That has been confirmed by Seamus Coffey. According to Seamus Coffey, raising the cap to 100% on intangible assets meant that we lost €722 million in tax revenue in 2015. Mr. Coffey went on to comment on the changes the Government brought in through a recent budget. He said they are only active from the day of the budget. He points out that they could have applied to all claims during the period when the Government had raised the allowance to 100%. He said that would have resulted in up to €1 billion of additional corporation tax being collected in 2018. In other words, this is not simply history. The Government decided not to take €1 billion from Apple under next year's budget. We can only imagine what that could have done for the housing crisis, the health crisis and the lives of people who are chronically under-resourced in areas of key public services.

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