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

I support this amendment. The biggest source of tax avoidance by corporations globally centres on this digital area. We know these companies can, essentially, write their own tax bills. In Ireland, that is because of loopholes that I believe we have helped them create. We have worked with them on a nod and a wink basis to create a situation to allow them to write down their taxable profits. That is done by having loopholes which allow the corporations to write-off the costs of payments for intellectual property or royalties on intellectual property. They make payments to themselves for the use of their own intellectual property.

Consequently, things that would be profits become costs and then become tax deductible. It is just a joke. It is assisting in accelerating inequality in the distribution of wealth to extraordinary proportions. These sorts of companies are leading the charge on this. A digital tax is a reasonable response to try to get a bit of tax back from these firms which specialise in avoiding tax.

If the Government has concerns that this might have a disproportionate effect on Ireland, then we should get out ahead of it. We should acknowledge there is a serious problem with tax injustice and tax avoidance and state we have a better solution to it. The starting point for that solution has to be acknowledgement of this serious problem. It should also be stated that what these companies are doing is immoral and we need mechanisms to deal with it. Then we go out and argue, in a positive way, for a way of dealing with that. On the other side of this debate, the bigger countries may be playing for their own advantage. I accept that. We should not, however, be just as bad as they are by stating we care only about our little bit of advantage.

There is a bigger picture here and that is of the big multinationals being parasitical in not wanting to pay their fair share of tax. We should look to address that problem. It is reasonable to have a report on this issue and also to have a serious discussion in this House about how we address it.

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