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

I will comment briefly. It is around the area of whether the effective rate of corporation tax in this country is as the Minister stated or whether it is not that the debate centres. I dispute it because the Minister is referring to taxable income after all the reliefs, exemptions and deductions in the list I referred to have been applied. To me, the essence of the problem is the total declared profits, which have mushroomed, are not what are taxed. About half of that is taxed. How €159 billion in profits suddenly turns into €79 billion in profits - with €80 billion in the difference - and how the 12.5% tax rate is only applied to that second lower figure is the problem. At the centre of that, as the Minister rightly says, are intra-group transactions. As I tried to stress, intra-group transactions and transfer pricing involve subsidiaries of the same company moving money around in order to avoid paying tax. That is wrong and we have to address it. I accept the Minister is looking at it and I accept there are some measures here, as part of the OECD process, that are moving to address some of these problems but we are not going anywhere near far enough. Equally, it is shameful the banks are not paying tax because of losses forward. I did not mention the research and development tax credit. Again, it is mostly going to this same group of companies when it could be better directed, in my opinion, into public universities for research and development that would benefit the domestic economy. We disagree but I have put the point and hopefully it has some impact on Government thinking.

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