Pressure Growing on Ireland's "Harmful Tax Competition" for High Tech Companies

According to a November 20, 2005 article in Ireland's the Sunday Business Post Online, the emerald isle is facing a threat to its tax revenues from the European Union and the United States as international concerns grow about the attractiveness of Ireland's low-tax regime for high-tech companies.

"The European Commission has published proposals for the harmonisation of
the European corporation tax base, effectively standardising the way tax is
calculated across Europe, which Ireland's EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has
described as tax harmonisation 'by the back door.' Now pressure is also
growing on the US government following news stories which have shown that US
companies such as Microsoft and Google are avoiding hundreds of millions of
dollars in US taxes by paying the lower rates of corporate tax in
Ireland. . . . Although the commission's plans to harmonise the tax base are being vociferously opposed by McCreevy, EU tax commissioner Laszlo Kovacs identified harmonisation of the tax base as one of his two main priorities.The commission's tax directorate has also said it intends “to continue the fight against harmful tax competition'‘."

A November 21, 2005 article by FinFacts Ireland also quotes these statistics from Deloitte & Touche, 2005 regarding percentage increase in profit required to achieve the same distributable income available in Ireland:

Germany 46%
USA 45%
Spain 35%
Netherlands 34%
France 33%
Belgium 33%
UK 25%
Estonia 18.24%
Cyprus 2.94%