Concept
Ireland as a tax haven
Related concepts (9)
Tax inversion
A tax inversion or corporate tax inversion is a form of tax avoidance where a corporation restructures so that the current parent is replaced by a foreign parent, and the original parent company becomes a subsidiary of the foreign parent, thus moving its tax residence to the foreign country. Executives and operational headquarters can stay in the original country. The US definition requires that the original shareholders remain a majority control of the post-inverted company.
Modified gross national income
Modified gross national income, Modified GNI or GNI* was created by the Central Bank of Ireland in February 2017 as a new way to measure the Irish economy, and Irish indebtedness, due to the increasing distortion that the base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") tools of US multinational tax schemes were having on Irish GNP and Irish GDP; the climax being the July 2016 leprechaun economics affair with Apple Inc. While "Inflated GDP-per-capita" due to BEPS tools is a feature of tax havens, Ireland was the first to adjust its GDP metrics.
Corporation tax in the Republic of Ireland
Ireland's Corporate Tax System is a central component of Ireland's economy. In 2016–17, foreign firms paid 80% of Irish corporate tax, employed 25% of the Irish labour force (paid 50% of Irish salary tax), and created 57% of Irish OECD non-farm value-add. As of 2017, 25 of the top 50 Irish firms were U.S.–controlled businesses, representing 70% of the revenue of the top 50 Irish firms. By 2018, Ireland had received the most U.S. in history, and Apple was over one–fifth of Irish GDP.
Double Irish arrangement
The Double Irish arrangement was a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax avoidance tool used mostly by United States multinationals since the late 1980s to avoid corporate taxation on non-U.S. profits. (The US was one of a small number of countries that did not use a "territorial" tax system, and taxed corporations on all profits, no matter whether the profit was made outside the US or not, in contrast to "territorial" tax systems which tax only profits made within that country.
Offshore financial centre
An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy." "Offshore" does not refer to the location of the OFC, since many Financial Stability Forum–IMF OFCs, such as Delaware, South Dakota, Singapore, Luxembourg and Hong Kong, are located "onshore", but to the fact that the largest users of the OFC are non-resident, i.e. "offshore".
Base erosion and profit shifting
Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) refers to corporate tax planning strategies used by multinationals to "shift" profits from higher-tax jurisdictions to lower-tax jurisdictions or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity, thus "eroding" the "tax-base" of the higher-tax jurisdictions using deductible payments such as interest or royalties. For the government, the tax base is a company's income or profit. Tax is levied as a percentage on this income/profit.
Corporate haven
Corporate haven, corporate tax haven, or multinational tax haven is used to describe a jurisdiction that multinational corporations find attractive for establishing subsidiaries or incorporation of regional or main company headquarters, mostly due to favourable tax regimes (not just the headline tax rate), and/or favourable secrecy laws (such as the avoidance of regulations or disclosure of tax schemes), and/or favourable regulatory regimes (such as weak data-protection or employment laws).
Leprechaun economics
Leprechaun economics was a term coined by economist Paul Krugman to describe the 26.3 per cent rise in Irish 2015 GDP, later revised to 34.4 per cent, in a 12 July 2016 publication by the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO), restating 2015 Irish national accounts. At that point, the distortion of Irish economic data by tax-driven accounting flows reached a climax. In 2020, Krugman said the term was a feature of all tax havens.
Tax haven
A tax haven is a term, sometimes used negatively and for political reasons, to describe a place with very low tax rates for non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher. In some older definitions, a tax haven also offers financial secrecy. However, while countries with high levels of secrecy but also high rates of taxation, most notably the United States and Germany in the Financial Secrecy Index ("FSI") rankings, can be featured in some tax haven lists, they are often omitted from lists for political reasons or through lack of subject matter knowledge.