Tax all profit of firms incorporated here’

US multinationals incorporated in Ireland should have their entire global operations taxed here, a leading academic has claimed.

Addressing the Oireachtas sub-committee on global taxation yesterday, Jim Stewart, associate professor in finance at Trinity College Dublin, said that existing tax residency rules, for multinational firms, are “extremely ambiguous” and suggested that where a company is legally incorporated should equate to where it is controlled.

However, Cora O’Brien, policy director at the Irish Tax Institute, told the committee that just because a foreign multinational is legally entitled to be incorporated in a country such as Ireland does not mean that it is taxed on all of its global profits there.