Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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58. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide a list of all documents requested by the European Parliament's TAXE Committee of his Department or of the Revenue Commissioners and in each case to specify if the request was acceded to or refused, with an explanation for each refusal. [32367/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform Deputy that the European Parliament's TAXE Committee has not requested any documents from my Department or of the Revenue Commissioners. However, in April of this year, the Chairman of the Committee wrote to Ireland's Permanent Representative to the European Union requesting certain tax information concerning Ireland and I understand that a similar letter was issued to all other EU Member States.

Ireland has issued a detailed response to the Committee's letter which provides information in relation to:

- actions to increase transparency, including arrangements for the exchange of information on cross-border rulings in accordance with EU Directives and proposals to implement the OECD recommendations on country by country reporting,

- changes made to Ireland's  rules on company residence in last year's Finance Act,

- Ireland's support for, and participation in, the OECD discussions on BEPS,

- Revenue administrative practice on the issuing of advance opinions, including copies of Revenue's published guidelines in this regard, and

- Ireland's double taxation treaties, including a list of the 72 countries with which Ireland has signed a double taxation treaty.  

While the Committee requested details of all tax rulings provided to companies in the period since 1991, Ireland was not in a position to provide this information as taxpayer information is confidential under Irish law and Revenue is prohibited from disclosing specific taxpayer information to third parties. I understand that, for similar reasons, other Member States were also not in a position to provide the Committee with details of rulings provided to specific companies.  Ireland advised the Committee that, in responding to the Commission State Aid enquiries in relation to tax ruling practice, with which the Irish authorities have fully cooperated, Revenue had identified that the total number of advance opinions issued to companies on corporation tax was 99 in 2010, 128 in 2011 and 108 in 2012. 

In response to the Committee's request for details of information shared with other Member States since 2010 under Article 9 of Council Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation, the Committee was informed that Ireland had spontaneously exchanged information with other Member States in 29 cases but that we were not in a position to provide details of the information exchanged in each case as this is specific taxpayer information which is confidential under Irish law.

Finally, in response the Committee's request for information in regard to the maintenance of a national list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, the Committee was informed that Ireland does not maintain such a list but that, as a member of the Global Forum on Transparency and Information Exchange, Ireland does not seek double taxation treaties with jurisdictions that do not meet the international global standard on transparency and information exchange.