Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the actual effective corporate tax rate over the past five years, breaking it down year by year and the amount of corporate tax paid over the past five years, broken down year by year. [40932/12]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the projected effective corporate tax rate for the next year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40933/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 54 and 55 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that companies operating in Ireland over the past five years have been chargeable to corporation tax at the 12.5% rate on their trading profits. A higher 25% rate applies in respect of investment, rental and other non-trading profits and profits from certain petroleum, mining or land dealing activities. Companies’ capital gains are effectively chargeable at the capital gains tax rate and the rate was increased:

- from 20% to 22% for disposals on or after 15 October 2008,

- to 25% for disposals on or after 8 April 2009 and

- to 30% for disposals on or after 7 December 2011.

The 10% corporation tax rate for profits from manufacturing expired at the end of 2010 and the 12.5% rate now applies to such profits.

There are different ways of measuring the effective rate of corporation tax depending on the variables that are used. As there is no single internationally agreed comparative measure in place, I am not in a position to provide such a measure for the period referred to by the Deputy. However, I mentioned previously that an effective rate of corporation tax of 11.9% was estimated for Ireland in a Paying Taxes study produced by the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2011 as part of an annual Doing Business report. The study includes a measurement of effective tax rates across 183 countries based on the tax obligations of a standardised company operating in each country and using standard assumptions regarding exemptions, deductions and allowances.

As regards the amount of corporation tax paid over the past five years, the following table shows the net receipt of corporation tax from 2007 to 2011: