Boston Scientific paid €18m in Irish corporation tax in 2019

Profit at the Galway-registered firm was hugely boosted because of an exceptional gain of €31bn in the sale of its intellectual property assets to other Boston Scientific companies. File picture: Laura Hutton/RollingNews.ie

The Irish business of Boston Scientific, which includes a number of overseas subsidiaries, paid out a dividend of $37.4bn (€31.5bn) to other group companies last year and paid Irish corporate taxes of $21.5m (€18m).

The leading US medical device manufacturer is one of the largest private companies in Ireland and employs about 5,000 people at sites in Galway, Cork, and Clonmel, Co Tipperary.

Profit at the Galway-registered firm was hugely boosted because of an exceptional gain of $36.9bn in the sale of its intellectual property assets to other Boston Scientific companies.

The accounts also disclose that an agreement between the IDA and Boston Scientific specifies that the company has a so-called contingent liability to repay in whole or part of the grants received amounting to $29.7m at December 2019. The directors said it is engaged in a series of initiatives aimed at growing its operating margin.

The accounts, which were signed off in late September, say that Covid 19 has unfavourably affected its key financial performance indicators but it expected improvement.