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Comment by almostarockstar | Hacker News Reader

As an Irish citizen, I feel embarrassed by the way we have dealt with Apple (and other behemoth corps). We simultaneously gave these organisations "free parking" and a "get out of jail free card".

I don't blame Apple for taking advantage though. I would.

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That free parking increased Ireland's economy by nearly six fold in a mere 25 years. It took Ireland from a second tier economy, to a first tier economic power ($300b in GDP with a mere 4.7m people). From sub $15,000 GDP per capita in 1993, to surpassing the US in GDP per capita at $62,000.

You can tell it's the large foreign corporations causing it, because of the big gap between the growth in domestic income and the headline GDP figure. However those companies still employ a lot of people and pay taxes Ireland otherwise wouldn't have.

Huge companies like: Mylan, Alkermes, Medtronic, Allergan, Johnson Controls, Accenture, Intel, Google, Apple, etc. would have likely not set up shop there if not for the tax policies. One can say, in response to that: fine, let them leave, we're better off -- except the Irish economy would get cut in half if you pushed them out by raising corporate taxes significantly, poverty would increase dramatically, unemployment would skyrocket.

GDP per capita doesn't seem like the best metric to track the growth of "Ireland's Economy" if it doesn't translate into more jobs/taxes/etc. though. Would you happen to know whether these development incentives have actually befitted the Irish people?

Go to Dublin and you'll see that these are not just postboxes. Most of those companies have a significant amount of employees in Ireland. They also pay taxes to the Irish state (albeit at a low rate) which is used to further develop the country.

Not a fan of what the Irish government did but it clearly helped Ireland to become what they are now.

jobs go away -> expeds go away.

Apple and these other companies pay taxes in Ireland due to a duty to his shareholders. Ireland improves its economy 6 fold by undercutting all other EU countries on tax rates. And other countries are what, fucked out of tax money?

And that's the problem: if the tax law changes to be more "fair", Ireland gets screwed. Like you said, the Irish government is fighting the EU decision to give them more taxes because if companies were forced to do that they might leave Ireland.

GDP doesn't tell us much in the case of Ireland, because these huge companies only invest very little in the country, as is typical for a tax haven. If you look at GNP, the gross national product, the actual gains for the people in Ireland are much lower. Have a look at GDP[1] and GNP[0] numbers per inhabitant for Europe: Where for most european countries both numbers are about the same, for Ireland there's a difference of over 30%. Much of Irelands GDP growth didn't result in more income for the people.

[0] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu... [1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...

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