[nigekelly]

The double irish is under pressure but core Corp Tax is still 12.5%. Much lower than anywhere else. so tax is a good reason to do this in Ireland.

In addition, Irish gov are talking about new R&D scheme which will be like 6-7% corp tax on companies that focus on R&D. Alot of European companies have such schemes and Ireland can't be singled out for being "dodgy" with this. I suspect Apple will benefit from this.

Of course we (being Ireland) wouldn't get all this investment if Apple (and all the other US multinationals) was allowed to repatriate profits back to the US without paying the draconian US corp tax of 35%.

Companies like Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Cisco have huge amounts of cash sitting there in their balance sheets. They spend it in other countries (and/or issue new bonds) to avoid paying the stupid 35% US corp tax.

Once the Republicans and Democrats get their act together on this, Ireland will be screwed.

[kokey]

I'm sure the tax makes it competitive compared others in the same time zone like London, Amsterdam or Berlin, but to me it seems to be succeeding in creating a critical mass of tech skills around Dublin that can stick beyond the taxes. If it was purely down to tax, a lot of companies could have just moved shop to Gibraltar 4 years ago.

[cma]

The "draconian" US corporate tax rate isn't so draconian when you consider the capital gains rate is way lower than most places, including Ireland.

[alphadevx]

> Once the Republicans and Democrats get their act together on this

So, seems unlikely then ;-)