Colm Keena, in the Irish Times reports:
“Irish food multinational Glanbia has put more than €1 billion into companies in Luxembourg that have no employees but serve to reduce its tax bill here. The companies are the subject of advanced tax agreements (ATAs) negotiated with the tax authorities in Luxembourg and feature in 28,000 pages of leaked documentation from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Luxembourg detailing ATAs with multinational companies around the globe.”
…
“The leaked documents show how Pepsi, Ikea, FedEx and 340 other companies secured tax deals from Luxembourg, allowing many of them to slash their tax bills while maintaining little presence in the tiny European Union member state.”“The material also shows how foreign multinationals use Ireland as part of Luxembourg- based structures that reduce their corporation tax bills in the Republic and elsewhere.The documentation was made available to media organisations as part of a major investigation into Luxembourg’s role in global tax avoidance.”
Glanbia’s €1bn Luxembourg move to cut its Irish tax bill (Colm Keena, Irish Times)
All legal and above board.
…for now.
which is the most worrying aspect of this story.
If it wasn’t Luxembourg, it would be some other country.
How about ethical? Just because something is legal, doesn’t mean it should be done.
I have to own up and say I’m completely biased when it comes to this as I live in Luxembourg and work in the finance/investment industry.
Does Simon’s brother know an’ting about this nice little earner.
..
wrong agribusiness company
pathetic smear fail
Same Industry.
And its not like Greencore or any of its subsidiaries are above all that.
And its not a smear campaign when they make it that easy to throw stones
That’s the other thing about Glasshouses Daddy’s Boy. They’re as see-through as ück.
A bit like your self Daddy’s boy.
No need to be nasty and defensive.
Those documents haven’t been leaked, they’ve been handed over under duress as part of a global tax harmony
Thought all this was okay because it brought employment here and you can tax the boll!x out of the employees instead?
You said a mouthful there Dissy
That’s it, I’m never buying another Glanbia album.
And if they force a free one on me, they’d better have a delete option.
Brussels sprouts will be shoved into every shopping basket FREE of charge on Dec 24th !
Property prices in European cities being what they are, Brussels sprouts have been forced to move into a Prefab.
Prefab Sprouts?!
Yay! Now lets all bully Luxembourg to change their laws instead of changing ours and being percieved as being “anti-business” to the glorious market
em… we are changing ours.
We are closing our portion of a loophole. We are not changing anything which would prevent this
The idea is that everyone closes a bit of something, things tighten, they run for a while, then things tighten again…. eventually squeezing out, closing the loopholes, no?
I think the idea is US and UK kick up about other countries without doing anything about their domestic tax code. All so they can look as if they are being tough but still not upset their rich buddies
Yup, an old head of Apple (the guy who set them up in Cork all those years ago) was interviewed on Six One the other evening about the WebSummit and wee Sharon asked him if the whole double Irish was damaging to Ireland… he said, he didn’t think it would in the long term. What I thought interesting is, and you don’t hear it said much from someone of his ilk, is that the problem lay largely with the US and the lack of real effort to tackle the problem from within the state’s own domestic tax systems.
Refreshing to hear it from an American, it’s said so few times.
is the e.u. making tax avoidance easier?
that’s what the eu was set up for.