Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 5 July 2017
55. Deputy Joan Burton asked the Minister for Finance if he or his predecessor met with an organisation (details supplied) to discuss its report highlighting the effective tax rate paid by 16 of the top 20 European banks here, as committed to in Dáil Éireann by his predecessor on 4 April 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31459/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraI am aware of the report which was published by Oxfam on 27 March. The report makes a number of comments about the level of tax paid by certain banks in respect of their operations in each country of operation, including Ireland.
I understand that the report relies on publicly available data published by banks under the capital requirements directive, CRD IV. The report takes this data and uses it to assert the effective tax rate suffered by banks in the countries in which they operate. While I am not at liberty to comment on individual taxpayers, there are a number of reasons that using this data to assert a company's effective tax rate has the potential to create a misleading picture.
Calculating a company's effective tax rate requires looking at a company's profits as calculated under Irish tax law and the amount of tax charged on those profits under Irish tax law. This information is not included in the public country-by-country reports. For this reason, caution is needed when using the country-by-country information when commenting on a company's tax affairs. For example, the profit figures filed in the CRD IV reports generally relate to profit calculated for accounting purposes. Companies, however, do not pay tax on their accounting profits, but rather on their taxable profits. There are a variety of legitimate differences in how these figures are calculated in each country.
Similarly, the tax on profit or loss figure in the publicly disclosed information may relate to tax actually paid over to Revenue rather than the tax charge suffered by the company. For example, where a company has losses carried forward from a previous year, this would reduce the amount of tax that must be paid over but does mean the company is not subject to a tax charge on its profits.
Neither I or the former Minister for Finance Michael Noonan have met Oxfam to discuss the details of the report. However, there was a productive meeting between officials from the Department of Finance and a representative from Oxfam to discuss the reports findings.
