"Double Irish" Tax Loophole Used By US Companies To Be Closed

An anonymous reader writes: The Irish Finance Minister announced on Tuesday that Ireland will no longer allow companies to register in Ireland unless the companies are also tax resident. This will effectively close off the corporate tax avoidance scheme known as the "Double Irish" used by the likes of Google, Apple, and Facebook to route their earnings through their Irish holdings in order to garner an effective tax rate of, as in Google FY2013, 0.16%. Ireland's new policy will take effect in 2015 for new companies. "For existing companies, there will be provision for a transition period until the end of 2020."

Comments

Bad summary? Or horrible editorializing?

[Balthisar]

"Tax evasion" is a crime. "Tax avoidance" is what is being done here.

Re:Of course they're giving a 6-year transition

[ArcadeMan]

We already knew that. No other straight men on the planet wears skirts.

Re:Transition period?

[Luckyo]

Because Ireland has started a very slow recovery. Closing the loophole would likely collapse its economy into even deeper recession than one it was in before.

Re:Transition period?

[agm]

This is not a loophole, it's policy. Good policy. Rather than bowing to pressure from other governments the other governments should pay attention and try and compete by reducing their tax rate accordingly. Anything else is price fixing, on a global scale.