Limited relief for Ireland in Trump's tax plan
Coming so soon after the UK’s surprise vote to quit the EU, the election of Donald Trump last November immediately put the spotlight on the huge number of US corporations based in Ireland. That was because he had pledged to slash US corporate taxes to 15% from the headline rate of 35%, to help lure US companies to set up in the US and not overseas.
That pledge alone had implications to undermine the Irish business model built around the low headline rate of 12.5%. Since the early 1990s, a competitive corporate rate had attracted to Ireland billions of dollars of US investments. US pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson, Actavis and Pfizer quickly became the largest Irish exporters.
