Greg Daly
The head of Social Justice Ireland has called for a rethink on Ireland’s corporate tax regime, criticising how workers often pay more tax on their income than companies do on theirs.
Challenging new figures showing how between 2009 and 2014 the State collected no corporation tax from Irish companies with an income of almost €17 billion, Fr Seán Healy SMA told The Irish Catholic, “at the moment we see huge gains for corporations and corporate profits are very high, but almost 70% of corporations pay no tax at all. I think that’s unfair”.
Fr Healy’s comments came following the disclosure of Department of Finance figures which revealed that the majority of companies registered to pay corporate tax do not do so. This figure has increased since the turn of the century when just under half of Irish companies paid no domestic corporate tax.
Research
The figures follow reports in May that about 80% of Ireland’s corporate tax take in 2015 came from non-Irish businesses. A range of tax reliefs open to companies, including reliefs on research and investment and double taxation relief which prevents companies from being taxed on profits that have already been taxed elsewhere, explains the failure to collect corporate taxes from Irish companies.
IBEC, the Irish business and employers’ confederation, has said closing off tax reliefs to businesses would be counter-productive, arguing that retail companies pay high commercial rates and are among the higher-taxed parts of the Irish economy.
“I don’t want to be hard on companies,” Fr Healy explained, “but if they’re making profits, they paying tax on the profits and I think there should be 6% or something on their profits they should pay. That’s an awful long way below the PAYE worker who pays a much higher percentage.”
A wage for lower-paid workers should remain a priority ambition, he added, even if it takes a few years to achieve it.