If Ireland wishes to make themselves a tax haven, then the US has very little influence over that.
But for anyone to claim that Ireland would experience this sort of growth without being the go-to tax avoidance location for the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and fill in the blank--is ridiculous on its face. Through the phenomenon of "income stripping" these tech companies essentially gift their IP to their Irish subsidiaries and then the subsidiary charges the parent company to use that IP, thereby stripping the parent company's earnings from the US--where the companies are actually located--to these tax havens.
In case you've been living under a rock you would know that Facebook has been fighting a lawsuit from the US treasury since 2010 over this exact situation.
It's pretty likely the US will lower its corporate tax rate in the next decade to counter the big corporations that keep leaving. Most of Ireland's pharma industry consists of American-owned corporations that fled to Ireland solely for low corporate tax purposes. If you adjust the US corporate tax rate down, they can just as easily move back.
Hillary is almost without question going to win the election. She has proclaimed that her husband would have a star role in regards to improving the economy. One of Bill's core economic ideas is to flatten the US corporate tax rate - lower the rate and remove various subsidies and loopholes - to make the US far more competitive with the rest of the world. If the US matches Western Europe on corporate tax rates - Europe has the lowest corporate tax rates of any major economic region - it'll begin pulling very large amounts of capital and major corporations away from everyone else.
And your point is? That work still needs doing, corporate profits are sky high. They can pay the tax and pay the workers.
Also much of the money passing through Ireland is simply for tax evasion not because actual business is taking place there. It's little more than a tax haven.
Dutch Sandwich and Double Irish has been discontinued. It will be completely finished by 2020. To suggest it's still going in full swing is a little disingenuous as the info by itself is a little outdated. That applies to a limited number of companies.
I think his point was that Ireland tends to tax the workers rather than the companies. So those companies are still a benefit to the country.
The Irish economy was carefully constructed around the 12.5% rate for decades -- the UK is foolish if it thinks this new 15% rate will work for it and can just copy it to emulate the success Ireland has seen from its own rate.
The low rate works if you're a small economy with access to a much larger economy. With Brexit looming and given the size of the UK it doesn't fit either of these important criteria for the strategy to work.
I think Osborne lowered the rate the prevent an exodus of companies from the UK more than attract others to it.
My point is that it's not as bad as some of the channel islands which have one company director for every two people.
Yes, the jobs need to be done, but those jobs might not be done in Ireland. Hence the Irish government and society is willing to have a low tax rate in order to get those jobs in Ireland (as opposed to USA). People in the USA might want those jobs in USA, but people in Ireland want those jobs in Ireland.
The UK, with it's oodles of "crown dependencies" is a much larger tax haven.
