A chara, – I very much welcome Suzanne Lynch's article "Ireland is complicit in raising global inequality" (Opinion & Analysis, January 25th), calling for multinational corporations to pay their fair share of tax and pointing to the fact that the aggressive tax avoidance strategies of these fabulously profitable companies are central to the shocking growth in the gap between rich and poor in recent years.
Indeed, I would go much further and say corporate tax avoidance is not only the central reason for staggering and growing inequality worldwide, it is also the underlying cause of global economic instability and the ever more precarious state of the world economy.
It is for this reason that I find it bewildering for Suzanne Lynch to claim that politicians of the left involved in the anti-water charges movement have failed to raise a storm on the issue.
The left TDs she refers to from People Before Profit, Anti-Austerity Alliance and some Independents have raised this issue repeatedly since we entered the Dáil five years ago.
I have included the issue of raising the corporate tax take from these big companies, by raising the effective and nominal rate, in every budget submission we have produced.
As a member of the Oireachtas finance committee, in the Dáil, in the media and on protest platforms, I have spoken again and again on the need for these companies to pay their fair share of tax. Indeed, I made precisely this point in a Dáil speech last week on the day Enda Kenny was in Davos.
On the very day Suzanne Lynch published her article, the Anti-Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit launched its common principles for the forthcoming election – the lynchpin of which was precisely the issue of global wealth inequality and the need for a higher effective tax rates on the corporate profits of the big multinationals.
The left has been the only force in Irish politics that has consistently and loudly campaigned for many years for a closing of corporate tax loopholes and who have challenged the sacred cow of the 12.5 per cent rate. – Is mise,
RICHARD BOYD
BARRETT TD,
People Before Profit
Alliance,
Dáil Éireann,
Dublin 2.