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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."
is a politician's wet dream of byzantine unfairness and vote buying
The "talent" in question is that able to secure local subsidies and bribe^Wincentivise the local politicians.
There's a reason Microsoft, Dell and so on have their European bases in Ireland.
Thankfully they aren't big on local talent for the Facebook movie.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Because IMO Facebook is just another fad and will go the same way as Friends Reunited when something new and shinier comes along or the novelty wears off. Very few trendy websites stay trendy for more than a few years - its only the interesting ones that survive and theres a limit to how much aquaintances boring lives and silly little games can keep you interested over a long period of time.
It's the Guinness. Just tastes better the closer you are to St. James's Gate.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
So our country goes farther in the hole every day and big companies skip out overseas to avoid paying taxes here. You don't have to be a financial expert to know that just ain't right.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Ha! As if the US spends its tax money wisely! 900 billion here, 900 billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
I asked my Representative to vote against the failout.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I think that the tax law changes started way back in the Clinton administration. If I remember correctly that Congress passed legislation to make it very difficult for people to move to lower tax rate jurisdictions and keep their money and at the same time made it easy for corporations to do so. This process of giving more rights and flexibility to corporations than to individuals continued full speed ahead during W. Bush's term.
I don't think that there can be much doubt (especially after this corporate giveaway bailout being voted on today) that most governments (including mine, the USA) have been totally subverted to corporate interests. The question is, I think, given this environment, how can we as individuals thrive most effectively? I have been blogging a lot about this lately, but I won't bore anyone here with links to that :-)
Corporations seek environments where they can generate the most profit. Get over it. America is quickly becoming a business unfriendly environment. Taxation, absurd regulations (for example, you CAN'T test 100% of your cattle for BSE no matter how much your customers want it, or how competative it will make you), insane legal exposure...
Welcome to the "service economy."
...and they say there are no snakes in Ireland?
Where's St. Patrick when you really need him?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
How do we, the citizens get in on this? Offshore banking isn't illegal, neither is having an offshore company. Where does one start researching this information? Considerations are lack of transparency, lowest fees, internet accessability, and no insane initial deposits like in Switzerland. Come on folks, dish!
Why should corporations want to stay in an environment becoming increasingly hostile? Public perception of many corporations (and certainly "the corporation") is justifiably dismal. The next president will no doubt raise business taxes. Doesn't it make sense to move to somewhere like Ireland? People make this same kind of decision all the time when deciding where to live.
One of the interesting things in these discussions is that so many people betray how utterly insular they are. The economy is global and it's easier than ever to move around the world and communicate around the world. The difference between Ireland and the US (or the US and China, India, Slovakia, Russia, etc ad infinitum) ain't what it was 50 years ago. American exceptionalism is commonly laughed at as something for fools and demagogues, yet everyone who rants about how corporations should be taxed higher and how corporations shouldn't be allowed to go overseas are betraying their own beliefs.
Sorry, thats what you get from a mind polluted by LOLCATS.
In Gregory v. Helvering Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand was quoted as saying:
"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."
Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465 (1935).
The fact is tax avoidance is a key part of keeping taxation in check. If it gets oppressive, you move. In this way, governments compete for taxpayers.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Joo Wantz Mah Turkee? Joo am teh fuxx0red!
All I'm seeing is the "unpatriotic" banner being waved by the left in America, when they AREN'T asking, "Why are companies leaving America, and why do they have hard-to-touch bank accounts offshore?" Somewhere there's a BAD disconnect - that we could minimize what many banks are going through by doing something that would ENCOURAGE people keeping their money there rather than seeing large companies as something to tax and take from because they somehow "owe" it.
The left NEVER asks what is wrong with their system - they just ask what is wrong with everyone else. We need to ask, "what would it take for you to keep your money in America," rather than proclaiming from the rooftops that they're leaving and should be punished for it.
Sorry, but I need to correct you.
This round of change problems came around with Nixon, not with Clinton. Similar sounding name, but diff. When corporations began to be unaccountable and stop having to report things, a number of almost immediate changes took place. Not over months, but days. Noerr Pennington doctrine in 1972 is where they decided "it's legal to use money to influence political power". It's where "felony interference of a business model" came around. After that Reagan, Bush Sr, they all kept it going even worse.
I'm sounding like a broken record. Once again, passing of the Fair Tax ( http://www.fairtax.org/ ) would fix this. Our current tax code punishes us as individuals and businesses for making money. The FairTax would turn the U.S. into the world's biggest tax haven, and businesses would be seeking to make the U.S. their home rather than fleeing it.
They will need to end all these loopholes to pay down the insane deficit.
Ahh, Ireland is a more recent example of what's been going on since the 70's. One of the totally legal tax scams no one cares to mention is when an American subsidiary of a conglomerate operates at a perpetual loss. American management uses the "operating loss" excuse to keep wage low. Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, Acer, etc. They get to reap the rewards of participating in the most vibrant economy in the world for rock-bottom dollar.
The problem with tightening these rules is that the average international corporation pays tax consultants to figure out the lowest operating cost method. If the U.S. doesn't provide the lowest operating costs, then they just re-organize to different parts of the world. Those clever corporations would, for example, issue bonds under one corporation then use them to fund another subsidiary. The bond-issuing corporation "fails" bondholders and equity participants lose everything and the other subsidiary that got the money lives on. The finance world is using that scam right now to "fail" everything over to the Treasury.
It's the equivalent of tightening your grip with a palm full of sand. I don't know a good way to fix it that won't be gamed in a couple of months after the legislation goes into effect.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
When you want a government that regulates and taxes everything into submission, is it any surprise that business moves to places with fewer regulations and taxes? Good on Facebook: I hope more business moves away from the US, as that appears to be the only remaining hope for US citizens to demand smaller government.
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Shillelaghs, tweed caps, and green t-shirts with orange "I <heart> Ireland" printing are NOT cool.
What?
Half of the UK's choosing to move their finances over to Ireland because the government (up until this afternoon) was only guaranteeing to protect up to £35,000 of savings should their bank collapse whereas Ireland will guarantee 100%...
It's not quite as simple as that, the government has increased the savings protection from €20,000 to €100,000 for the 6 wholly Irish owned banks. This happened only a few days ago, and it is planned to last for 2 years. The biggest influence is on the banks liabilities, i.e. all it's deposits, commercial, retail (you and me) etc. According to the bankers, and the central bank, the bank's problem is with liquidity, not solvency. This means the banks need to attract deposits so they have short term funding. It also means they can borrow cheaper, and the hope is that banks can starting giving loans to each other again.
The government here don't want any of our banks to crash like in the states, the economy is already in a recession with the crash in the housing market (which was the governments fault in the first place). If one of the banks were to become insolvent it would cause serious problems here (one out of the six banks might have been close to insolvency).
The risk taken on by the government is huge, our national debt is just under €40bn, and the six banks owe €440 billion (but have €520 billion in assets). It equates to ~ €100,000 being potentially spent per person in Ireland, compared to ~ $2,000 per person in the US.
While Sarkozy is trying to convince European governments to have a pan-EU rescue plan (especially the German gov who are against such a system), there is a possibility more banks may fail, and after the worst performance of Irish banks on the stock market in history (shares dropped by as much as 36% on Monday) it scared the government into action.
Admittedly, it's not very competition-friendly to look after only Irish-owned banks, but there are supposed to be some discussions with the UK, Dutch and Belgian owned banks operating in Ireland to equalise the playing-field.
On another note, it's about time governments moved in to shake up these parts of the banking sector, where there hasn't been enough regulation, and this last year has shown what happens when we let the mystical, magical "market forces" to run rampant, governments have to step in to fix other peoples mistakes.
Disclaimer: I am not a supporter of the current Irish government, a lot of the current economic problems can be directly attributed to their pumping of the property and construction sector, along with the usual dose of mis-management and wastage, but I do agree with their move to support the Irish banking system in part.
This should just about balance out the tax lost when Bono "I'm all about supporting the little guy" NoLastName moved all of U2's holdings out of Ireland
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Some of you may remember the Presidential debate only 6 days ago. As soon as I saw this story, I recalled McCain's argument for lowering business taxes. He used a very specific example...Ireland.
You can see the video here with the Ireland remark highlighted.
I took the liberty of transcribing McCain's words. Not to go totally partisan up in here....but you gotta give him props for calling this one:
The business tax. Right now, United States of America business pays the second highest business taxes in the world, 35%. Ireland pays 11%. Now, if you're a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then obviously if you go to the country where it's 11% tax versus 35, you'll be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, etc. I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses remain in America and create jobs.
The fair tax penalizes people for spending money. That is, without a doubt, a bad thing for the economy as a whole.
I'd prefer a gross receipts tax on every TIN (that's taxpayer identification number, aka SSN for individuals and TIN for corps). A small percentage (3-4%) of every dollar you receive goes to the government. I'm even okay with a 2087xFMW (annual min wage salary) against any receipts. It sounds like the fair tax, but it's essentially a "fee" for all transactions in the US. Think of them as real estate agents...just cheaper. Spending costs you "nothing" extra. Multi-level corporate schemes cost the tax rate x the number of layered corporations. Yes, it will "double tax" S-corps. Big deal - you want the protection of a corporation - a Government institution - you pay the fee. I happen to get all my income from an S corp, so I would be affected. Sole Propriatorship or Partnership avoids that tax, and it makes all the officers liable for any screwups they do. That can hardly be seen as a bad thing. It also rewards short distributor chains (or, rather, punishes large chains) so items made an sold locally directly from the source have the lowest tax (i.e. it's "green"...but don't tell anyone).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?