Readers blog: Taxing matters vital in national interest

Your editorial ‘It just got harder to sustain tax argument’ (Irish Examiner, September 30) asked the question if we ‘want to remain some sort of rogue outlier’ in relation to taxing multinationals but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s annual report contradicted the basis of that statement elsewhere in the same editorial.

The C&AG found that ‘while Ireland has the lowest statutory rate of corporation tax in the OECD, 12 OECD countries had a lower effective corporation tax rate’.

Your editorial also says that ‘one in four people employed in the private sector ... in this State works for a foreign company’ and ‘the taxes that those workers and companies pay fund the public sector and public services’. We are, therefore, not a rogue outlier on taxation matters but have a vital national interest at stake which involves all citizens. We are what your editorial calls ‘a small, peripheral member state’, recently bankrupt and threatened by Brexit and future possible US tax changes.

As your editorial says, if we are serious about the equality of our citizens being equivalent to the equality of all of the other citizens of the EU or indeed the OECD, the answer seems obvious. We have no option but to use our veto in the EU decision-making forum to emphasise that this is a matter of vital national interest.

A Leavy

Sutton

Dublin 13