Cat and mouse: US tariffs on dairy produce

If the ever-increasing flow of corporation tax from American multinationals with Irish bases to national coffers seems too good to be true it may be because it probably is.

If our growing reliance on that fickle income stream seems reckless it may well be because it is. America regards those revenues as the prize in the international cat-and-mouse game called tax management. They also, rightly or wrongly, regard those revenues as theirs and want to repatriate them one way or another.