Facebook Finds Grass Greener In Ireland

theodp writes "Facebook announced it has chosen tax-haven Dublin for its international HQ, but not all are buying COO Sheryl Sandberg's line about local world-class talent being the motivation behind the move. The Irish Times recently reported that Irish subsidiaries owned by US multinationals are opting to convert to unlimited liability status, concealing the financial performance of their Irish operations from public view. They include Microsoft's incredibly profitable Irish subsidiaries Round Island One and Flat Island Company, Google Ireland Holdings, and a subsidiary of Apple Computer. The conversions have occurred as US tax authorities have increased their scrutiny of international mechanisms used by American multinationals to reduce their taxes at home."

Comments

Re:It's not the taxes or the talent

[PetriBORG]

FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died.

It sounds pretty funny, but its exactly true - the FDA does worry about patients that are removed from a study because they died - if someone is enrolled into a drug/device study and those people die, the why they died is very important and is one way companies try to hide failure of their product. You'd be very upset if their failure rate was actually 10% instead of 5% which would have prevented them from becoming an approved device for use in hospitals and drug stores.

Re:I guess they need to save money while they can

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh! Get off my lawn!