Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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32. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of requests invoking mutual agreement procedures received; the total amount of the profit adjustment involved; the tax involved; the number of cases agreed; the basis of agreement that is withdrawn, agreed in full, agreed in part; the tax cost, if it has been refunded or offset; the balance of cases open; and the amount of tax involved in those cases, which remain open in each of the years 2010 to 2018 and to date in 2019. [40659/19]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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33. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of requests invoking mutual agreement procedures received by country in each of the years 2010 to 2018 inclusive and to date in 2019. [40660/19]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 32 and 33 together.

I am informed by Revenue that there are currently 41 open Mutual Agreement Procedure (“MAP”) cases, which relate to adjustments raised by tax authorities in Tax Treaty partner countries in respect of transfer-pricing or the attribution of profits to permanent establishments.

Some of these cases are at an early stage and Revenue has not yet received sufficient information to estimate the potential Irish tax relief that could result from closing the cases. For those cases where the potential relief is known, the maximum aggregate tax value of the relief could amount to €300m.

However, while this aggregate value is based on granting relief for the full foreign adjustments, the total relief ultimately granted is likely to be less, as a result of the withdrawal or reduction of the foreign adjustments concerned on the conclusion of the MAP negotiations.

The following table includes the number of MAP requests made by companies for each of the years 2010 to 2018 and to date in 2019, together with the number of requests where tax relief was granted and the tax value of the relief involved.

*Number of requests received for MAP assistance is based on the application of the OECD MAP Statistics Reporting Framework published in 2016.

**Relief may be granted over a number of years and may take the form of increasing losses to be carried forward as well as refunds and off-sets.

***As there is only one case involved, publication of the amount of tax relief granted is not considered appropriate as it could lead to identification of the company.

Publication of the potential maximum amount of the profit adjustments proposed by Tax Treaty partner countries is not considered appropriate as these are adjustments raised by each of the countries concerned unilaterally. The MAP negotiations undertaken by Ireland, on the other hand, endeavour to resolve the potential double taxation arising, working with the other countries bilaterally.

To observe taxpayer confidentiality, the OECD standard when reporting statistics is not to identify individual countries where there is a small number of MAP requests in relation to those countries. Since 2017, in accordance with the OECD standard for reporting statistics, the number of cases for an individual country is not identified unless the number of cases received in a particular year, when added to the opening number of cases for the year, is at least 5. During 2017, 3 MAP requests were received in respect of the US. The remaining MAP requests were in respect of 5 Tax Treaty partner countries. During 2018, 6 MAP requests were received in respect of Spain and 4 MAP requests were received in respect of the UK. The remaining MAP requests were received in respect of 6 other Tax Treaty partner countries.