WWN’s Guide To Ireland’s Corporate Tax Loopholes

AS OECD director Angel Gurria suggests Ireland is being ‘used’ by multi-national companies, WWN takes a close look at these mysterious loopholes they avail of and tell you all you need to know.

1. It is worse than experts could have predicted, much of Dublin’s Grand Canal area has been engulfed by a mysterious loophole whereby laws that seemingly apply elsewhere have no effect. It is essentially the Bermuda triangle for money.

2. There has been some worry that tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter and other multi-nationals would leave were these loopholes (now covering several kilometres of office space) to be cordoned off and shut down. All loophole companies have confirmed they will continue to operate in Ireland with ‘a one-of-a-kind intelligent, passionate and ambitious workforce’ right up until a second after any loophole is closed at which point they will flee with all the speed of Usain Bolt on speed.

3. Rumours that the Government are bending over backwards for tech companies and their employees is untrue according to Leinster House sources but they have confirmed all employees there enjoy a diplomatic immunity deal, meaning they are free to kill whoever they like without fear of prosecution.

4. Many people are afraid of tax loopholes availed of by multi-nationals and these fears have been further raised after news from the Netherlands where a single mother of 3 was attacked and forced out of her home by a tax loophole last weekend. The loophole also made disparaging remarks about her youngest child’s ‘abnormally large head’.

5. The tax avoidance measures used by multi-nationals, often referred to as ‘double Irish’, allow them to funnel profits out of the country to avoid tax liability on those profits. This sees the Irish exchequer lose out on large revenues but Irish people by law are not allowed say that this practice is in any way objectionable because tech companies are cool (see article 22.9 of the Irish constitution).

6. These tax avoidance measures are truly abhorrent whereas the ones you or I try to exploit are ‘grand’ and morally righteous.

7. The Government is believed to have no long term plan as how to keep these firms in Ireland in the event the loopholes are closed. Ideas such as throwing a ‘money party’ at which senior executives at multi-nationals can roll around in a pile of money while being told ‘thank you so much for helping us simple Irish folk out of the mud and toward modernity’ by various poor children has yet to be given the green light. Playing East 17’s hit ‘Stay’ has been ruled out however.

8. Experts have explained to stupid Irish people like you that you can’t expect companies to stay in a country that doesn’t allow them to siphon off billions of euro without paying tax on it. Demanding that people adhere to moral business practices in Ireland in the event of closing tax loopholes means you’re a Nazi who hates hugs and flowers. Chances are you punch babies too.

9. America is mad at Ireland due to these tax loopholes and we should feel bad because America.

10. There is a big fear that the closing of any loophole would adversely affect the property bubble that is clearly not a bubble but the Government has pledged to forge ahead with plans to stoke those fires regardless of tax designations.

11. Tax loopholes do not give you cancer. They may at worst give you that creek in your neck.