Hacker News Reader

Comment by Detrytus | Hacker News Reader

Yep, and that's how you get Ireland's GDP per capita artificially inflated to $114k, when in reality it should be maybe a third of that...

View on HN

Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.

But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.

This is not true. If anything Ireland is too reliant on a few multi-national corporations. In 2022, corporate tax was the second highest income stream for the state: https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4992b-exchequer-surplus-...

This article suggests Google employed over 8,000 people in Ireland in 2018, and it's quite likely that number has grown since.

https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/

Which means one employee per $6 millions of revenue. Which is exactly what I’m talking about: their actual presence in Ireland is much smaller than you would expect from revenue number alone, which again supports my claim about “accounting trick”

Because big companies are funneling money through Ireland, they usually need some corporate presence there. Because they already have a small office there, and there's a large English speaking population, when they want a bigger office in Europe, Ireland is a likely choice.

If they weren't already in the country for accounting purposes, they might choose different locations for offices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com