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THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT has now officially been removed from the Irish Constitution, after President Michael D Higgins signed the legislation formally repealing it this evening.
The Irish electorate voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment by a large majority in May’s referendum, with just under 67% voting in favour of repeal.
A stay was put on the result formally being enacted into law, as a number of individuals launched legal cases seeking to challenge the result of the referendum.
The last of these appeals was dismissed by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
In effect – by voting to repeal the Eighth - the country voted to introduce the 36th Amendment of the Constitution.
This allowed the existing Article 40.3.3 – which contains the Eighth Amendment (right to life of the unborn), 13th Amendment (right to information about seeking a termination), and 14th Amendment (right to travel for a termination) – to be replaced with this line:
Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.
With President Higgins signing the legislation today, this article has replaced the Eighth in the Irish Constitution.
Minister for Health Simon Harris has already indicated the government will aim to introduce enact legislation providing for abortion by the beginning of 2019 at the latest.
In a tweet this evening, he said the process would be expedited as soon as possible.
The expected legislation would allow abortion without restriction up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and in very limited circumstance thereafter, such as when the mother’s life is at risk, as outlined here.
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Quids in, I would have done the same, tax avoidion – legal and brilliant
Your comment reveals your state of mind.
Provided you live in Ireland!
And what about ethical ??
@ Stephen Church
The downside to your argument is that taxes on ordinary Irish people get increased to make up that shortfall. Don’t you see that?
Brillant and legal…
@jim – ethics and business rarely mix
Mark – no we dont , facebook , intel, google, apple etc wouldnt even be here without this tax loophole , so it does more good than harm to our economy.
Look up double irish with a dutch sandwich to get details of how this works.
@Stephen Church
The right-winger Fine Gael’ers wrote these ax breaks into Irish law to benefit their cronies. These companies keep most of their profits and never re-invest them into jobs. The country is running a deficit of €20 billion because of these tax voids.
@its student , i think youll find they still pay corporation tax, also 20 billion , still lower than all social welfare spending combined , how bout we abolish that instead.
That it does Una. It’s a terrible thing to want to bring business into this country.
@stephen
‘Ethics and business rarely mix’ …
is a strange,naive and too general a statement to make.
I don’t know what your experience in business is but ethics are taken very seriously by companies internationally, despite what you may have learnt in ‘left-wing’ school – The banking sector excepted
@Student
The IFSC was a fianna Fail initiative in the mid eighties
Liked
These loopholes should be closed. Otherwise, we will have to pay property taxes and water charges to fill this tax gap. The downside of tax breaks to rich corporations.
The loop holes are written and designed by Irish financial services sector. Every transaction that goes through Ireland, some these firm make a killing
and the Irish financial services sector were previously exposed as corrupt.
@ Mark Malone: The sort of so-called “loopholes” addressed in this article are not written and designed by the financial services sector. They are enacted by the Government, on the advice of IDA Ireland, the Revenue Commissioners and, no doubt, lobbying groups on behalf of multinational corporations (MNCs). Not everything has to do with the banks you know!
We don’t really seem to have a coherant plan at all in relation to tax , we aer against new transaction taxes because of the risk of job josses , we are against any tax harmonisation plans because of the potential job losses an damage our FDI chances , we are kite flying about putting tey another 2 per cent on income taxes in the hiher bracket , yet completely BALK at the idea that instead of 12.5% -which is HALF the UK maybe we could manage another 1% or so on these revenues without the world ending – its likely in a few years when things do change that we will look back at 2012 and say-wow maybe we could have raised our rates to 13.5% back then and help the problem instead of taking the ostrich approach and just ‘hoping’ that the rest of Europe dont get their tax harmony plans to work….no joined up thinking at all..rant ends
Because Ireland said it wouldn’t raise this. If we raise it by 1% this year, how do you “prove” to the companies that we won’t raise it by 2% next year?
US multinationals alone (never mind other ones) employ 100,000 people in good jobs.
12.5% of something is better than 25% of nothing.
It is “joined up thinking.” The only thing (if anything) that’s going to get Ireland out of this mess is Growth and jobs. Ireland can’t tax its way back into prosperity…
Do you honestly think we’re getting 12.5% out of corporate taxes? :D
Nah, Mark, you’re probably right.
But we are getting 100,000 well paid jobs and all teh subsidary jobs and all the taxes those employees pay…
SaintRuth,
Stop being selective. Just because “they’re creating jobs” doesn’t make it right.
Ireland is BROKE thanks to these crazy tax breaks.
No Mark – but we are getting a lot in PAYE, PRSI and USC in well paid skilled jobs whcih also keeps people off our job seekers allowances!!!
But we are getting 100,000 well paid jobs and all teh subsidary jobs and all the taxes those employees payâ¦
Una Dev – it’s not because of these corporate tax breaks that we are broke. We are better off for them – that much is pretty undeniable, as these corporations would not have located here otherwise. Lots of high-paying jobs are being created that otherwise would not be.
In saying that, the Double-Irish needs to end.
BTW – just so others are sure, we actually have one of the highest collection to stated profits corporate tax ratios in the world. We get most of our 12.5%.
@saint Ruth , Our income taxes are among the highest in the developed world , 42, plus 7 USC , plus prsi etc has us pushing almost 60% on income on any decent level of wage , our corporate taxes at 12.5 plus the loopholes are the lowest levels around , this disparity is incredibly high – Ireland also promised not to raise income tax, yet kite flying suggests a promise might be broken again with earners , but god forbid that any promises on corporations could be broken , I agree we cannot tax our way out of problems but try explaining that to the forthcoming budget , we run the island with a 20b deficit every year currently and to think or suggest that this will be addressed without looking at raising any taxes is absolutely an ostrich approach , the fact that we are so willing to treat the lowest levels of corporate tax as sacrosanct but will attack all the people who live here with tax increases on everything else (such as 23% vat ) , new property tax , water , etc speaks volumes. It isn’t a choice -we have to raise taxes but what is a choice is where we raise them from.
Bob MacBob wrote:
“it’s not because of these corporate tax breaks that we are broke. We are better off for them – that much is pretty undeniable, as these corporations would not have located here otherwise ”
I keep hearing this claim all the time but you know it’s false. Ireland has the lowest taxes in western Europe so a marginal increase will not damage anything. Bob, it is clear you follow Charlie McGreevey in terms of corrupt tax breaks. That is selfish thinking and Ireland is bankrupt because of it.
Yes, Una, it does make it right.
Ireland is NOT BROKE due to the low tax for google and HP and twitter and Elan and Wyatt and Microsoft and Cisco and Intel and on and on.
Ireland is BROKE because of Irish bloody banks.
“Collectively US companies have US$188b in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ireland. This represents 8% of all US investment in the EU & 5% worldwide.”
US companies alone employ 100,000 people in good jobs (do you know the average salary in Google?) and all those people pay tax so the Irish gov benefits. And all those people buy things so it benefits the local economy.
And Mark, no, they don’t pact up and leave when the IDA grands end. E.g. Intel has been here for 20 years.
Intel’s invested in a bloody expensive unrelocatable physical asset in its fab StRuth; it’s not a good example.
Digital might be a better one, or Dell, or the big pharma companies like Pfizer.
These companies are not altruistic or ideological; they choose the most profitable route, always. If you make it financially worth their while to come to Ireland dressed in a chicken suit and slathered in coleslaw, you’d have a lot of ready-made sandwich fillers walking around.
And while those companies using the Double Irish are paying some of the 12.5% tax, all the companies that you are talking about are using the Dutch Sandwich : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Dutch_Sandwich
The Irish authorities never see the full revenues and hence cannot tax them, even at the low Irish corporate tax rates.
Companies using the arrangement
Major companies known to employ the Double Irish strategy are:
Apple Inc.
Eli Lilly and Company
Facebook
Forest Laboratories
Google
Microsoft
Oracle Corp.
Pfizer Inc.
Dell is a good example. Dell has been in Ireland for 26 years.
Dell even today employs 2,000 people in Limerick and Dublin.
Of course those companies are here because it is lucrative for them to be here.
They are not charities.
‘Saint Ruth @of course those companies are here because it is lucrative for them to be here’ ‘they dont up and leave when the tax breaks end’ – I dont disagree with you – but why then is there such a fear that if the corporate tax went up 1% they would up and leave / stop being lucrative to operate here.
@ Una, please, are you allergic to jobs or something?
Daft daft daft comment Una. Really? Please do some research before posting
All these companies will just move out of Ireland leaving 1000s more jobless.
Nonsense. Where will they go? All other European countries are higher taxed than Ireland.
Una, three seconds of googling will tell you which countries already have low corporate tax rates. Another minute of research will tell you the effective rate in France.
Ahh u can smell the jealousy.
We should be closing these loopholes. Apple and Microsoft also use the “double Irish arrangement” to avoid paying taxes to Ireland. It gets routed through the Netherlands.
Not a zero sum game to close these loopholes but Fine Gael support them despite the loss of revenue from Ireland.
Duplicate comment above
Thats why the FT once refered to us as the wild west of corpo tax in Europe. Thats why theres lots of letterbox companies in the IFSC. But hey! I wouldn argue.
It’s incorrect to refer to IFSC companies as “letter box entities” Irish Funds are required to have a minimum of 2 Irish domiciled directors, have the majority (if not all) board meetings in ireland as well as admin and transfer agency also being carried out in the State. Similarly, IFSC banks are all Irish registered in accordance with Irish Company law and prove huge employment to a skilled workforce. This is one of the few industries in ireland that is growing year on year so I don’t think it’s correct to write them off as “letterbox” entities.
Una Dev
Your the one talking nonsense. There are at least four EU Member States where it is possible to negotiate a zero rate of corporate taxes.
Una Dev
You’re the one talking nonsense. There are at least four EU Member States where it is possible to negotiate a zero rate of corporate taxes.
Éamonn Tiernan
Not quite. It works this way: I could hire someone living in Ireland to register me and channel my funds through them in order to get generous tax treatment. The problem with this = unethical and contributes to a boom-bust economy.
Low taxes failed to protect Ireland in 2009 when HP, Dell, Pfizer etc left Ireland.
But surely the generous tax treatment retains more multinationals which provides more tax receipts from PAYE / USC etc as well as lower social welfare payments…Dell etc moved out of Ireland due to uncompetitive rates of pay in comparison to Poland, for example.
A healthy Financial Services industry does not lead to boom / bust economics.
Competitiveness is NOT low taxes. It is low wages. Honestly, this is textbook stuff.
Paddy Rodgers
Perhaps you could name those four EU states? I would like to look into your claim that they can negotiate a “zero rate”.
Mark Dalt – Pfizer employ more people in Ireland than any other country outside of the US. 4000 Irish jobs is hardly leaving the country..!
Dr Jim Stewart, senior lecturer in finance at Trinity College Dublin, produced a report into the IFSC which found that many treasury management firms in the IFSC were little more than ‘brass-plate’ firms or ‘letter-box’ companies with zero employees. He surveyed 41 firms and although they had no staff, the median size in terms of gross assets was $379 million, with a median profit of $6.3 million. The figures were from 2002, as these were the earliest available to Dr Stewart. It is not surprise that in 2005 the IFSC was labelled by the New York Times as the “Wild West of European finance”.
@Mark Dalt: As others have pointed out, Dell and Pfizer are still in Ireland; Hewlett Packard is also still here and actively recruitingin fact. Companies restructure all the time; that’s the nature of business; the close certain units and open new ones. The key point is that Ireland has managed in most cases to secure new investments by the same companies, even when certain older businesses become unprofitable here or are exited worldwide. That is partly due to our tax rate.
By the way, ALL countries engage in efforts to attract companies, but they employ different means of doing it. Ireland happens to be good at it and is particularly successful because we have a very transparent tax regime. In France, the headline rate of corporation tax is much higher than here but companies can write off so much of that tax that many of the biggest companies in France pay almost nothing. You can’t just look at the rates.
How come when a tax avoidance story comes to light there is always a link back to Bono and or U2. I’m aware that its all legal and legitimate but is it fair on the rest that cannot afford devious accountants.
Without the stable 12.5% corporation tax rate and related tax breaks, it is likely that Ireland would have far fewer of the more than 1,000 Multinational Corporations currently based here. We would have far fewer of the 146,000 jobs directly created by foreign companies operating here. We also would not have the additional 100,000 jobs that support these firms.
IDA-supported multinational companies make up 30% of Gross Value Added in the economy; account for more
than two-thirds of all exports, at €115 billion annually; contribute nearly half of all corporate tax revenues; spend almost €7bn on payroll; and account for €19 billion in total spend in the Irish economy.
For every Digital that pulled out or Dell that restructured, there are scores more which have stayed, decided to set up here or to expand their existing business here. IBM has been in Ireland since 1956, Microsoft since 1985, GlaxoSmithKline since 1974, Citi Bank since 1966 etc. etc. Already in 2012, 66 Multinationals have announced new establishments or expansions in Ireland, following a record for inward investment year last year.
I’m not claiming that all of this is due to our low tax rate and that it should be untouchable for ever, but many of the comments on this forum are totally ignorant (in the literal sense of the word). All companies like to have as much certainty as possible regarding tax rates and other key determinants of their bottom line. For that reason, it is arguable that we attract much more additional corporation tax income by leaving the rate steady and convincing new companies to continue to set up than by increasing it by a point or two and risk losing prospective investment to other more stable countries.
Have a look at the IDA website and some of its publications – some might be a little bit impressed at how Ireland has successfully attracted foreign investment down through the years, even during this time of recession. http://www.idaireland.com/invest-in-ireland/ (And no, I don’t work for the IDA).
@insider I don’t think anybody really disputes the all the good that comes from multinational FDI for Ireland, many of whom are not here solely for the tax breaks , we are the only English speaking country using Euro , have a good track record in having a well educated workforce , good age demographics etc etc But the rate in the UK for example for corporate taxes is double, 25% v 12.5% , and yet the general mantra that is being used all the time is ‘all the jobs will be lost , all the major companies will leave….and you really need to wonder if they would actually not weigh up the pros and cons….companies like Ebay that target the massive online market in the UK from here are able to do so from Ireland and pay HALF the corporate tax level…they are extremely unlikely to uproot and try do a similar operation to target the UK market from say Czech Republic or Poland if we were 13.5% and they were 12 ?? or indeed any other non english speaking country…they are unlikely to move to UK to operate and then pay almost DOUBLE the rate ….even we were 13.5 % v 25% we would be far more likely to retain these operations.. would it really be Armageddon ??, these companies want to target the massive Euro Market it is a lucrative market and while I appreciate that many vested interests don’t like paying more tax , no one does , it seems to be incredible that we will seriously consider increasing incomes taxes further on the people who pay some of the highest taxes in the OECD ——but won’t even countenance a marginal increase on the lowest corporate tax in Europe without churning out the same scare tactics-they will all up and leave, to where exactly ???.
@Dave Hammond: I’m afraid you don’t really appreciate how companies make decisions. Ireland is a tiny country on the periphery of Europe. We have lots of points stacked against us, e.g. the tiny size of the domestic economy, the cost of transporting raw materials into Ireland, the cost of transporting final products to their final destinations for sale. We cannot be compared to the UK. (And by the way, everyone in Malta speaks English, the same in Cyprus and, effectively, also in the Netherlands – all in the Eurozone). For these reasons, we need to compensate with other attractions, such as low taxation.
More importantly, we DON’T have among the higest levels of personal taxation in the EU or the OECD. This is a total fallacy. Income tax as % of GDP in Ireland was 11th highest in the EU in 2010, while social security in Ireland was 26th highest (i.e. almost the lowest) in the EU in 2010. While both rates have likely increased a bit since 2010, they are still far from being the highest. (In the same year, corporation tax was recorded as 10th highest in the EU, so not exactly at the bottom of the pile). See http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/resources/documents/taxation/gen_info/economic_analysis/tax_structures/2012/report.pdf
This scare-mongering about massive job losses should we try and make our multinationals pay more than chump change is pathetic.
A tax system should not be based on fear.
We have more going for us as a place of investment than being utterly gutless on tax.
Unethical and immoral.
Thems the rules. Now which kind soul has the balls to change them.
I’ll tell you what’s immoral, 450,000 people unemployed.
And you jokers want increase tax to increase that number…
All I can say is, thank god that the journal in no way reflects mainstream irish public opinion…
@saint ruth….and how exactly does an increase of 1% in corporate tax increase that 450000 if as you say they are operating here because it is a lucrative business and they wont up and leave when the tax breaks end ? How is it that we can contemplate raising the highest levels of income taxes on workers but not 1% on the lowest level of coprorate tax available ?
@Dave Hammons It’s because companies crave stability. If you promise a stable rate and then change it, companies start to question other promises and commitments. They Ireland becomes a less attractive proposition. Nobody’s claiming (at least I am not) that companies will suddenly up and leave if we increase corporation tax by 1%, but we may well lose the new investments which are so vital to creating new employment (which in turn generates additional income tax revenue).
As I wrote elsewhere, it is arguable that we will generate much more additional corporation tax income by leaving the rate steady and convincing new companies to set-up here than by increasing it by a point or two and risk losing prospective investment to other countries that are perceived to be more stable. This is not a science, it’s psychology and we have to use all the plus points at our disposal to convince companies to invest here when the country’s reputation is not exactly fantastic.
Simple fact of the matter is as long as we have the current debt based monetary structure controlled by financial institutions we will always have boom/bust cycles!
I agree, this is no standard boom bust cycle! huge money, huge immigration, huge morons in charge. By the time this bust is over, we will have more than a country to build.
@insider…interesting points , i haven’t had time to read all the tax charts you supplied but noted the average corporate tax levels for the EU27 are 23.5% , and the EA17 are 26.1% , some are as high as 30 plus per cent , Ireland as we know are 12.5%. Leaving aside your assumption and ( slightly condescending remark )that I don’t appreciate the variables concerned for companies making decisions ( you have no knowledge of my business acumen/experience / level of business ) I think you somewhat missed the point I was making , the major shifts in the type of business that are most common MNC’s in today’s world. EA Sport , Facebook , Linked In , Google or Ebay are not like the manufacturing dominated companies who previously engaged in ‘regime shopping’ and ultimately ended up in the parts of the world with the lowest costs of labour and raw materials like china etc. they have a completely different set of criteria and the items you list like transport of final products , costs of raw materials, the tiny size of our economy are not key ingredients for companies like i used as an example.. Ebay. I said that our people pay some of the highest taxes ( that is not just income tax ) and that is not as you claim a fallacy… , income tax is high enough -especially when the 7% USC is included , but vat rates at 23% , VRT rates, licence fees , taxes on alcohol / petrol you are being very selective and disingenuous to claim this is all a fallacy that we are not a very highly taxed people … Are you saying you think that these companies would relocate to Malta , The Netherlands or Cyprus if we had a 1% higher corporate rate here ?? Now there’s a fallacy…
He in it for the money . Why not
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