Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the amount of profits made by companies registered here in 2011; and the total amount of tax paid and to break down the profits and tax paid into bands starting from €0 to €100,000, €100,000 to €500,000, €500,000 to €1 million, €1 million to €5 million, €5 million to €20 million, €20 million to €100 million, €100 million to €500,000 million, €500,000 to €1 billion and more than €1 billion. [44304/12]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the number of companies that pay tax in each of the corporate tax brackets; the amount of profits they declare; the amount of tax they pay and the average effective tax rate in tabular form. [44305/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 189 and 190 together.

I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the relevant information is contained in Table CTS 1 of the Statistical Reports published annually by the Commissioners and which can be found on the Revenue website at www.revenue.ie. The latest year for which information is published from that source is for 2009 which is contained in the 2010 report.

The corresponding information for 2010 is as per the following table. This will be published in the 2011 report on the website. Data for the year 2011 is not yet available.

CORPORATION TAX STATISTICS 2010

CTS1 - Distribution Of Incomes and Tax

I would draw the Deputy’s attention to the Revenue Commissioners’ obligation to observe confidentiality in relation to the taxation affairs of individual taxpayers and small groups of taxpayers. Accordingly, they are not in a position to provide a breakdown in relation to incomes exceeding €10 million as requested, due to the relatively small numbers of companies with incomes in excess of that level.

Regarding the tax rates, all companies operating in Ireland are 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. This rate also applies in respect of 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 per cent to 22 per cent for disposals on or after 15 October 2008; to 25% for disposals on or after 8 April 2009 and; to 30 per cent for disposals on or after 7 December 2011.

With regard to the effective tax rate, the Deputy has been advised in my previous replies to his questions on this subject that 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.

That said, when responding to questions in the House last year, I did mention that one estimate of the effective rate of corporation tax in Ireland is 11.9%. This figure came from a 2011 Paying Taxes study produced by the World Bank and PriceWaterhouseCoopers as part of an annual Doing Business report and includes a measurement of effective tax rates across 183 countries. This effective tax rate was calculated based on the tax obligations of a standardised company operating in each country of the study and using standard assumptions regarding exemptions, deductions and allowances.

Another recent study by the European Commission – Taxation Trends in the EU 2011 - also indicates that Ireland has an effective corporate tax rate which is close to, or indeed higher than, the statutory 12.5% rate (the rate identified is, in fact, higher than 12.5% perhaps because of the higher 25% tax rate that applies, generally, to non-trading profits).

The above calculations are to give the Deputy examples of the differences that exist in comparative studies on effective tax rates, depending on how the rate is calculated or who carries out the calculation. However, the fact that these effective tax rates are close to our headline rate is reflective of the strong transparency around Ireland’s 12.5% corporation tax regime.