A Chara, — Why should Ireland have “much to fear” (Editorial, March 26th) from the OECD’s laudable proposals to introduce more equitable corporate taxation on a global scale?
Given that the organisation’s aim is to thwart the spurious (that is, borderline-legal) tax avoidance tactics of multinational companies, how can any country fear the call for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, which in any case serve to secure the conditions of the possibility of engaging in economic action in the first place?
The worldwide sovereign debt crisis had many and varied roots, but not the least was the fact that corporations’ contributions to tax revenue have fallen dramatically in absolute and relative terms over the last three decades.
Ireland’s ranking as the second-highest exporter of information and communications technology is an unashamed deception, perpetrated by its corporate tax legislation. The Government is evidently living a lie in the hope of winning the favour of tax-dodging multinationals through its parasitic trickery, doing so at the expense of the public coffers of fellow EU member-states as well as of US, Australian, and other market economies. Ireland, that is, is effectively hindering jurisdictions across the world from earning tax revenue, revenue which is absolutely essential to them if they wish to operate as stable democratic nation-states and efficient open market economies.
Thanks to the sly trick of tax-dumping, Ireland is cooking the books; but it is not pulling the wool over its citizens’ eyes, those who are bearing the burden of dysfunctional tax structures and misguided austerity policies.
Earning a pittance (with dubious job creation benefits) at the expense of the world’s economies and remaining nonetheless in a condition of economic subservience and thus underdevelopment will not secure sustainable growth.
Is mise,
JOHN FARRELL,
Im Nardholz,
Frankfurt,
Germany