European Commission plans threaten change to Irish tax system

Ireland’s insistence that it is not a tax haven and that in fact other EU countries have tax regimes that facilitate tax dodging by multinationals will be borne out by a study to be released next week.

But while this will be good news to Finance Minister Michael Noonan a number of directives and recommendations on corporate tax to be released by the European Commission will threaten massive changes in the country’s tax system.

The package of measures to be released next Tuesday builds on the agreements in the OECD and G20 on base erosion and profit shifting — BEPS — but which will make some of them compulsory and align the way they are implemented across the EU.