Election is the calm in the storm of maintaining a competitive corporate tax regime

When Tim Cook and his two senior Apple colleagues were questioned by a US Senate sub-committee back in May 2013, the headlines generated in the world’s business press were unsettling.

Some lawmakers repeatedly characterised Ireland as a tax haven, saying behemoth Apple channelled billions of dollars of global revenues generated outside of the Americas through two or three Irish incorporated companies.

The charge sheet was that Apple paid little profit tax to the US tax man on over half its haul of global sales.