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Comment by sailingparrot | Hacker News Reader

> Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes?

Why do you assume no one is? This has been discussed at length during the last French presidential election for example.

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> Why do you assume no one is?

Because they're picketing Apple and not the National Assembly?

As far as I know, the French national assembly doesn't make the law in Ireland, so I fail to see the point.

Would you be discussing the occupation of the National assembly here in HN? Did you the last time?

Found another article. https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0916/905202-donohoe-eu-tax-plan...

"According to one diplomat, the strongest level of opposition came from Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Luxembourg was said to have raised a series of practical problems about the proposal, arguing it would introduce a lot of complexity into the tax system."

Go figure. Noncompetitive EU countries complaining the loudest.

Can't help notice that three of the four are tiny countries. And the fourth, Ireland, is not that big either.

I'm starting to thing that there might also be a geopolitic reason to become a tax heaven, not just an economic one, something along the line "Let's convince Amazon to book profits here, and there let's see who will dare mess with us, given that Amazon will be protected by USA"

For a small nation, it's one of the few outsized competitive advantages they can try to offer (that is, something they can do that can benefit them far beyond the scale of their population).

Ireland's corporate tax rate + joining the European single market, resulted in one of the greatest booms in modern economic history. From $40 to $280 billion in GDP in just 17 years.

Given the extreme nature of the benefits, a small nation is probably crazy not to do it.

Is that inflation adjusted?

France has a lower effective rate of tax than Ireland's for companies in the CAC40 - 8%. There's a lot of hypocrisy whirling around about tax. The larger a company is, the lower tax it pays in France owing to various breaks and deals. A bunch of this criticism is just another way of saying France First.

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