Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 May 2013
178. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance further to sworn statements given by Apple representatives to the US Senate Committee investigating the company's tax matters, if he can explain the way Apple's taxable income in the State is calculated in such a was as to bring its corporation tax to single digits; and if these methods are applied to other multi national corporations [25525/13]
View answerI cannot comment on the tax affairs of individual companies. However, I am aware of the Memorandum issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week. I want to make it clear that we do not have a special low corporation tax rate for individual companies. Ireland’s tax system is statute-based so there is no possibility of individual special tax rates for companies.
All companies resident in Ireland are chargeable to corporation tax at the 12.5% rate on the profits that are generated from their trading activities in Ireland. A higher 25% rate applies in respect of investment, rental and other non-trading profits. Chargeable capital gains are taxable at the capital gains tax rate of 33%. The tax rates being quoted publicly this week are emphatically not the rate of tax paid by such companies - or by any company on its Irish activities. Having examined the document produced by the US Senate Subcommittee, it appears that the rate that is being quoted is got as follows: the tax charged in Ireland on the branch activities in Ireland of companies that are not resident here is divided by the entire profit of the companies concerned as if they were resident here, which they are not.
It is clearly wrong and misleading to attribute this rate of tax to Ireland. Companies which are not tax-resident in Ireland are no more chargeable in Ireland in respect of their entire profits than they are in any other country in which the company is not tax resident - and these company profit figures should not be used to assert special tax rates that simply do not apply here.
