Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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291. To ask the Minister for Finance the status of the work of the technical delegation from his Department to Brazil regarding the decision to by the Brazilian authorities to add the Republic of Ireland to its taxation blacklist; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1666/17]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Brazilian Federal Revenue Service have agreed to meet a technical delegation from the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners to discuss Brazil's inclusion of Ireland on their tax list. Our Ambassador in Brazil is working on finalising the scheduling of this technical delegation. 

Brazilian Federal Revenue Service have made clear that Ireland has been included on the list because our statutory rate of corporation tax is below 17% which is the benchmark set under Brazilian law. In our formal submission to Brazil we highlighted that Ireland also has a 25% corporation tax rate on passive income and a 33% rate on chargeable gains. We also stressed that the 12.5% rate has been settled policy in Ireland since 2003. Ireland's corporation tax take has also typically been very close to the EU and OECD averages both in terms of corporate tax as a percentage of GDP and in terms corporate tax as a percentage of total tax revenue. We believe it is inappropriate to include Ireland on a black list simply because we apply a low tax rate to a wide tax base which is fully in line with recommended OECD best practice.

Our technical  delegation will outline this view to the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service and seek to fully explain our corporate tax system. We remain hopeful that we can persuade Brazil that Ireland should be removed from the Brazilian list.