Hi there! I want to personally thank everyone for watching PolyMatter in 2023. I hope you've enjoyed our videos this year and look forward to making more next year. In the meantime, I can't think of a better way to start 2024 than to make a charitable donation to save and improve lives with today's sponsor, GiveWell. For a limited time, new donors can get their entire donation matched (up to $100, while supplies last), just by choosing "UA-cam" and then "PolyMatter" at www.givewell.org Happy new year! -Evan
I came to Ireland for college, stayed, worked and married. What drove me to come back to the country is that despite earning money just under the second income tax bracket, I was unable to find and afford to rent an appartament where I could live privatly with my wife. All professionals I worked alongside with are just renting rooms for crazy amounts of money. For the last year I lived 2h comute one way and still payed 1850 Eur for a scruffy, poorly isolated 1 bedroom appartament with a psycho landlord. I learned to love Ireland, but it seemed to hate me.
Ireland is listed as rich but Irish people barely have wage levels to match increasing cost of goods and services and its near impossible to ever buy a home. Its increasingly difficult to even afford rental costs and the increasing inward migration of refugees is helping create a further demand for housing that just cannot be met. The massive centralisation of everything in Ireland on Dublin also absolutely does not help.
yep that last point hardly anyone brings up most modren jobs are exclusive to dublin since our other cities are tiny and dated in comparison its a joke
Couldnt agree more. Its a shame that companies are still hell bent on bringing people back to the offices. WFH worked for 2-3 years during covid so it proves it can work. If people could WFH it would decenteralise everything with Dublin. The rent pressures may drop if people can live in the midlands and west but still earn a decent salary. WFH can literally solve so many issues like rent pressure, commuting times (even for those who need to be on the road will benefit with less traffic), child care, environmental impact etc. I suspect these companies are tied into long leases in modern developments and dont want to see them empty... and our Government do not have the backbone to bite the hand that feeds them...
@@markf4258 Your completely right about WFH. Its not just the companies though that are interested in profiteering. Most of the politicians in the Dail are either landlords themselves or indirectly connected to ones and they have a vested interest in seeing high rental rates so they can maximise their own profits. Its a cross-party issue and leads to the absurb situation where our leaders publically bemoan the sprialling rents and rising prices whilst their own rental holdings fill their coffers higher and higher. If anything the Irish public are too tolerant of our authority figures. Any other country would have brought down the government with a general strike by this point but modern Ireland? Nah.
@@em97c fair point, but if you were able to obtain a salary from any of the Dublin tech, finance, investment and real estate firms but live in Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo etc, you could definitely afford a decent place to live. The problem is once your forced to commute to Dublin, your left with having to pay high prices in surrounding counties to Dublin. In this day and age, the vast majority of work can be done online, 2020-2022 proved that.
I lived in Ireland for a year. Moved there for a position in a big tech. After reading the GDP and growth, I expected a thriving nation, and Dublin on a growth course. What I found was a crumbling society with barely any infrastructure in contrast to other Western European economies. Dublin became a city that preyed on big-tech workers and ostracized locals by monopolizing and inflating the housing market to a ridiculous degree so that only desperate migrants with high tech salaries would agree to the leases while the average Irish citizen was priced out of their own city or forced to live in ridiculous conditions. Not to mention it is common for foreign students to share a moldy and unkempt house with 40 other people. It was abundantly clear the country was hanging by a thread relying on the big tech.
I get what you're saying but if you're surrounded by tech workers and the tech industry you probably can't appreciate there's a whole other country getting on with its business outside of that bubble. Never in my whole life in Ireland have I considered tech the lifeblood of my country.
@@SprocketHolesI wouldn’t hold your breath. While these experiences are valid, they’re anecdotal and all the figures for our country are pointing the right way
I'm Irish, born and reared, but when you said "Ireland is the only English speaking country in the EU" - I genuinely had to pause and think; is that true!! 😅🤣
@@conalllynch7840false Malta’s NATIONAL language is Maltese that’s what comes first. Also it’s half a million people ridiculous how we call that a country
Never look at GDP per capita only look at Median Personal Income is my rule! If money doesn’t react the people it can leave the country as quick as it came!
Nah, Ireland is an outlier. GDP is still quite a reliable measurement but not isolated of course. The ultimate measure with probably be median disposable income tho. That cuts straight to the bone of just how much money people have after living costs.
GDP is not a gold standard of measuring productivity. Even without the tax issues, irelands manufacturing output is immense, mainly because the manufacturer goods have high profit margins ; pharma, technology and med devices. That alone is enough to skew GDP.
Having lived in Ireland for a decade i can say without the shadow of a doubt that the whole "second wealthiest nation" thing is a mirage. The housing crisis makes it so that you can be wealthy enough to live in a 500k house that is actually an old 2 bedroom 1 bathroom with poor insulation and no private garden a 40 min commute from town, you're still living in a house worth half a million, and PAYING for it! But really are you wealthy or is the economic state of affairs forcing you to live like that, cause I'm sure your money would be worth a lot more elsewhere.
Same here. After 10 years I'm calling it quits. What used to cost 100k is now 300k. What used to cost 250k is now 600k or even higher. In 10 years time, it's become impossible to buy a property here. The competition is so extreme that overbidding is still a reality here. In fact, it's the norm. There's many other EU countries that still have affordable houses. Mass-immigration and government corruption together with the financial repressions by the banks aren't being discussed in the broken Irish media. The media is complicit as they're being paid by those very institutions and therefor directly benefit from maintaining this broken and fraudulent economic reality.
It isn't the second richest country but the miracle is real. You should have seen how poor Ireland was in the 1980's. Real poverty, food insecurity, mass emigration. The figures are bogus but the economy has grown hugely, and with real exports.
aside from housing and local services, your relative wealth still gives you immense purchasing power over things like fuel, commodities, and services from outside the country.
Thats the way the Zionist syndicate intend it. You are just another cog toiling in the socialist system while all of the real wealth is transferred to the top by the fiat banking cartel in collusion with their criminal friends in the government.
The really sad thing is that this 'creative accounting' impacts negatively on ordinary Irish citizens.A GDP of €104k per head compared with a mean gross salary of €45k distorts all economic planning, including contributions to the EU budget. The influx of a small but highly paid expat community results in cost of living for all increasing, especially house prices & rents. Yeah, the government gains, but the multinational corporations are by far the biggest beneficiaries.
And the government has mostly spent the tax windfall on importing yet more foreigners, who they hope will be a more friendly and loyal voterbase than the natives. Also the multinationals haven absolutely disproportionate impact on our legislation. People here say we can't live without the multinationals, I don't think we can live with them.
GDP has nothing to do with salaries, if salaries were the same as GDP then every company in Ireland would make no profit LMFAO. That said our GDP is about 20% bloated due to the assets of multinationals and our airline leasing companies assets passing through the country. Gross national income is what we mostly use, not GDP. GDP is actually an outdated metric due to globalization that's why modified GNI came into being.
@@peterhoulihan9766 "And the government has mostly spent the tax windfall on importing yet more foreigners, who they hope will be a more friendly and loyal voterbase than the natives"? Do you enjoy babbling nonsense? The tax windfall, most recently, was one reason why the Irish government was able to lavish around Euro12 BILLION on the Irish people to deal with the cost of living crisis. No, tax revenue is NOT spent on importing ANYONE. People come to Ireland because we have a successful economy. And NONE of them can vote in Irish referenda, presidential elections and general elections. IF legally resident, EU/EEA citizens can vote in local and European elections. IF legally resident, Third Country citizens can vote in local elections only. If any of them secure Irish citizenship, then they obviously acquire all the rights associated with that citizenship. Our current government is a three-party coalition. So which party are these foreigners supposed to be loyal to? Fianna Fáil? Fine Gael? The Irish Green Party? And which IRISH voters are being disloyal to any party in Ireland, by virtue of being Irish? "People here say we can't live without the multinationals, I don't think we can live with them"? OK, we can add basic ignorance of economics to the long list of things you prefer to know nothing about.... Back in reality, the multinational sector directly employs between 12% and 15% of the Irish labour force. Back in reality, the multinational sector pays well above the norm, and thus exerts upwards pressure on wage levels in Ireland. Back in reality, the multinational sector's presence in Ireland has driven a massive increase in third level education here, as well as forcing domestic employers to uo their game. Your entire post is incoherent tripe....
@@LeoVaradkarDestroyedIreland Bullshit. The claim about "Shit wages..." is complete nonsense. "...lack of culture..."? What does that even mean? Irish culture has never been stronger. Yes we have a high cost of living, and we also have a very high STANDARD of living. Back in reality, I am Irish, have spent half my life outside the country, and I can remember just how bloody awful Ireland was back in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s. Things are incomparably better for the overwhelming majority of our hugely larger population.
I can’t believe a big UA-camr did a thing on check the box treasury regulations 😂 As a US tax lawyer, all I have to say is FINALLY. Because this is only scratching the surface of the shenanigans and the games you can play by separating entity form for corporate/liability and tax purposes
Interestingly Apple does not have a single apple store in the Republic of ireland. I assume there is some tax reason for this. There is one in Belfast and every other medium sized EU/UK City but not Dublin or Cork where they have a facility for over 40 years. So much for serving their Irish "community". This is a good video and true. People on the ground are struggling with enormous house prices and a tech generation with a lot of money living beside the 'real' economy of teachers, nurses etc. The length and dept of the connections means Ireland is quite entwined in these companies. Many execs and others have lived here and are from here and the work ethic is more American than European. No unions in these big tech companies. So beyond tax, they have a lot of reasons to stay, location, work force, language, culture, connectivity to the US and a mutual understanding of our people. Irish companies employ as many people in the US as US companies employ here for the moving of profits means Ireland is making fortunes from wealth earned elsewhere. We are still too dependant on those few companies and this remains a problem. When you have your hand in the lions mouth, you stroke its back. The wealth illusion is proving painful for many who can't find a way to leave home and it is coming to a crux with elections this year largely about housing.
@stevozrepto5558 yes I know and still there is not a single apple store in the Republic. One of the wealthiest and most tech oriented countries in the world does not have a single apple store in spite of there being 3000+ people working for apple here and they declaring huge profits in this country. Does that not seem odd at all? Belfast, Manchester etc have a store but Dublin doesn't?
I watched two companies I work for in the past, both listed and ranked, do this exact tax cheating in Ireland. And it is tax cheating. Only difference is when you do it, you can go to jail like Capone, and when a company does it, they are rewarded.
@@tjnakyep. And corporations and the 1% have been slowly molding the tax code to be that way since the 1980s. Arguably even the 70s. Class warfare has been going on for over 50 years against middle class and poor folk.
VAT, Sales tax, Payroll tax, Income tax, Customs Duty, Property tax, Dividend tax, etc. Apple pays enormous taxes to all countries it operates in. This video only focused on corporate net income tax.
@@Kriophoros We are so used to being fleeced by our governments that whenever we see a country with friendly tax rates, we automatically label them as tax havens.
My cousin lives just outside Dublin and pays €1000 a month for a room in a house, and he's quite lucky at that. One of the reasons I'm terrified of the future and housing issue
The homeless crisis has nothing to do with lack of housing. They are not connected issues. Lack of houses just means a very expensive market. The homeless crisis is down to lack of mental health crisis, lack of welfare emergency provision and so on.
I am an irish person suffering because of the housing crisis here. I have been looking for a place to rent since November last year and still have not found a place. On Ireland's leading property website, where the majority of private landlords and lettings agent's do business, there is just under 2000 properties available for rent in the entire country. Competition is incredibly stiff. It is very disheartening. I am lucky to have a roof over my head, there are those in much more desperate need than me.
That is what happens when a culture allows its government to manage everything from healthcare, housing, education, roads and so on. They cannot even repair potholes yet the Irish government collects 4.5 billion in road duties but only spends 1.5 billion.
I'm late, but I'm a Canadian who's mom immigrated from Ireland. She was raised in the Grand canal docks. One day, she told me she was reliving her years in Ireland after talking about housing. I hade no idea what she meant. She was right about this at least
4:32 - this isn't accurate. It was an accountant employed by Apple who found the loophole, which was an existing one from when Ireland was attempting to attract manufacturing jobs. It wasn't a loophole by itself, but the way it interacted with the peculiarities of US tax law made it one. What they Irish government _actually_ did was back off and do nothing about it because they didn't want to lose the jobs and tax income.
@@P________ The Tax Acts. @ talideon is right. I was amused when a US Congress committee was fulminating about these corporate practices a few years ago. They are only possible because of US tax law which, as the video says, allows US multinationals to park their earnings outside the US and not pay US tax on them.
I'm a Irish mental health professional and educator. These headline economic figures can make for Kafkaesque reading when you work on the frontline in these services, which are rapidly disintegrating. Schools and hospitals have been in a state of permanent crisis for about 15 years with immense waiting lists and overcrowding, but the last three years have been truly shocking. The worst of the worst has been in children's services. In certain parts of the country, there are effectively no paediatric mental health services - and by that I don't mean overly long waiting lists or under resourced facilities under constant pressure. I mean nothing - if an individual under 18 has a mental health crisis or is displaying indications of a serious disorder or developmental issue, the best they might get is an appointment in four or five YEARS. If they are not that lucky, they may be told that they are simply not a candidate for mental health services. That this is happening in a nation that allegedly is one of the wealthiest in the world and currently has a budget surplus is profoundly frustrating to contemplate.
I "managed" to be consulted by public hospital outpatient in 9 weeks.Corporate VHI must have played part. However despite extensive diagnostic evaluations (incl. 20page long Questionaires for family member /parent , wife/partner,work colleague or boss ) and conclusion ☆severe adult ADHD ..leading expert and head department decided to prescribe Antidepressants .3 months of tweaking dosage yielded nothing (apart job loss 70kpa+p&b+VHI.) Then 12 weeks of no meds - just therapy with person right from studies/ 1st patient yeey / and then upon my request on consultation with "headmaster" I was told Adult ADHD doesn't exist-contrary to his own diag....
I've been through the healthcare system here. It's dogshit. I went through school, looking back I was clearly a troubled child, no one in school noticed or cared. Then fell into a pit of despair, eventually tried to get help. Wait nearly 2 years to get some counselling. Have 6 sessions and then be told that's it. "Refer back to GP" Pinged and ponged around like a fucking hot potato. I'm in a better place now (not great, but better than I was at least) but it's no thanks to the Irish health care service.
I live in a good sized town in Donegal. A 3-bed house will cost you 3-400,000 here. And we have no public facilities except a small library, the primary school is literally crumbling and mouldy on the outside. The old wooden windows are rotted. Its a tough place to live.
@@Art-is-craft Well it has something to do with wealth in general, as lack of wealth can cause such outcomes. I'm guessing that you mean that in Ireland today the problem is not lack of wealth, but how that wealth gets allocated?
not to be pedantic, but some of the B-Roll used in this is a little questionable as you keep showing the UK not Ireland. 15:52 is the UK, 2:10 is the Northern Ireland legislature and nothing to do with the Republic's Taxes and 3:00 is a the British PM Harold Wilson who has nothing to do with Irish tax laws.
At the tail end of the 3:00 clip you can see Sean Lemas for a second. But the point is sound. There’s a number of questionable clips. That happens when you just dump search terms into stock photo/video sites, without political/historical knowledge. Plus the stock footage of Dublin is often tourist areas full of foreign tourists, not Irish people. The fella pulling the pints at 18:46 is in a British pub, we don’t pump pints the way the British do. Really opens my eyes to other Polymatter videos, presumably just as sloppy.
9:20 It was never obscure to the law. Every tax lawyer in the world knows of the double Irish /Dutch sandwich scheme but generally this falls under tax avoidance, not evasion
@@tjnak you might be talking about consumption taxes/VAT which fall under indirect tax. Here we're talking about direct tax (corporate, individual, income, property, etc)
@@ayanned VAT, Sales tax, Payroll tax, Income tax, Customs Duty, Property tax, Dividend tax, etc. Apple pays a lot of tax that is not just net income tax. Also, what's wrong with enriching the world with a nice new product? Why isn't that fantastic just by itself?
As a lay observer living in Dublin, I see the construction sector booming, lots of work, lots of cranes throughout the city & suburbs. In cities there is work for anyone in low skilled work for €15 per hour. At 40 hours per week that should be a decent income. The cost of housing is so high that it’s common for people to spend 50% and more on rent. In that situation it is near impossible today save money and try to buy a property. Many young graduates go to greener pastures; AUS, US, CAN or GB. Meanwhile migrant arrival numbers have been high for some time (very high as a proportion of total population,even when compared with other EU nations). Public services have limited capacity, homelessness is steadily rising. We cannot house our current population, the construction sector is pretty much running at capacity (relying heavily on EU migrant labour; high skilled and low skilled workers). The number of new residential units is nowhere near demand, it takes long term planning to promote trades in schools and build a competent workforce, there is a shortage of skilled tradesmen currently. Maybe we can incentivise young male migrants to take up apprenticeships and become the builders we need. Ireland is headed for some difficult decisions, we cannot continue to expand the population at triple the rate that we expand the housing stock. One of the few sectors that is wealth creating is agriculture. Irish beef fetches good prices internationally. Our dairy is of the highest quality too. Most of what is produced is exported, bringing in valuable € to balance trade. Recently government policy and mumblings have been increasingly negative toward the beef & dairy producers because of methane emissions. Talk of culling cows to drastically reduce herd numbers and imposing carbon taxes on the farmers. I worry that our elected leaders are not just self serving weasels (as any of us would expect) but they are also incompetent… they are busy texting while at the wheel during a slow motion car crash. I don’t pretend to have the solution, just lots of questions.
I think its a case that they are corrupt. Most being landlords themselves and the lack of control we see around that industry. But i also think they are incompetent, like they do obvious things like giving friends big contracts and then the project is driven to extremes in pricing. Thinking of the childrens hospital specifically
@@Ion_TheTrashB3ast there is definitely an air of entitlement about our TDs. Like a smugness that oozes out of them. Once elected, they’re up on the pig’s back for life, the pensions are massive and they’re not shy in claiming every possible penny of expenses while they’re still in the job. I voted SF last 2 elections but I’m getting cold feet, Mary Lou is my local TD & she had precious FA to say about the migrants & protests in East Wall last year. They seem happy enough with the current lack of control over our borders (with regard to non EU migrants).
Let's not pretend that the construction sector is running on full. Ireland is allergic to building high density housing. They simply don't do it. There isn't a single high rise apartment building in Galway in spite of the fact that the city desperately needs it, yet the housing estates are shining with brand new single family housing with all surfaces paved for the 2-3 cars expected to accompany them. Ireland needs to start planning ahead.
All very true except I’d say the young no longer look to the UK as a greener pasture like they do with Australia and Canada. Having come from the UK to Ireland for education (the FFI was a genuine miracle and granted me an education that my own govt couldn’t) in post Brexit, post Austerity, current conservative govt and just general imperial decline syndrome the UK is just rough as hell to live in right now. The bread is too expensive and the govt hates the circuses. It’s just very angry and tense, all over the world right now, but particularly in the UK.
Second highest Highest GDP in Europe with rampant homelessness and poverty. It's honestly shameful as an Irishman to see what's happening in my homeland. Most if not everyone I know that are my age either have emigrated, are in the process of it or at least have it as a goal, this country has very little prospects for a mid 20 year old. Rent has skyrocketed with police (Garda) regularly assisting if not entirely carrying out illegal evictions (Look up spicebag's painting in relation to this). Most if not all socializing happens with alcohol involved, don't get me wrong I love a few pints here and there but when it's multiple nights out a week on the sauce it gets very repetitive. Our health services while staffed with some of the most hard working and talented professionals is so woefully mismanaged it's sickening. Regular 10-20+ hour waits in A&E to be seen for symptoms ranging from small afflictions to symptoms causing serious concern. The government have been trying to build a children's hospital for years costing upwards of 2 Billion Euro and from reports is under-equipped and in need of securing more funding for completion, is honestly quite astounding how blatantly mismanaged the whole situation is and yet nothing is done as the health minister is 'one of the lads'. The majority of our towns and cities have become centered on tourism and catering to that market as much as possible so Airbnb and the like are rampant again amplifying the strain on the housing market. It's all just quite depressing to be honest. I want to sing the praises of my countrymen as honestly they're a great bunch of lads, it is true that you'll never beat the Irish, there's just a unique side to us that make us likeable for want of a better explanation however that fact makes it all the harder because it feels like the younger generation inevitably have to leave it all behind to find better opportunities. Great vid man, A Chára, P. Ps. The Celtic Tiger refers to the period of the early 2000s before the recession in 08'
@@Lightningdude We're fine because it feeds into the far right hooligan ideology. The protests were organized on Twitter and hate, racism and assaults on migrants have increased. We don't want American Republican ideology here. We don't want any of it.
Bullshit there isn't mass emigration from Ireland on average we have a net return of 10k irish citizens annually most people who do emmigrate go to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in pursuit of adventure which happen to be 3 of the only countries with higher costs of living than us
A practically bottomless labyrinth. Just today I found a story about Britain's richest woman, Denise Coates, owner/CEO of Bet365. One of her business moves was relocating the corporate seat to Gibraltar.
How can they claim they make key decisions in Bermuda when Tim Cook works in Silicon Valley and they print “designed by Apple in California” on every product
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
I've always said that countries should tax the revenue generated by multinationals within their borders at the same effective rate as local businesses. Allowing loopholes like these to exist is deeply unfair.
@@kristijangrgic9841 The burden of VAT is split between the customer and the seller. The customer pays higher prices, the seller gets lower profits. The exact split is determined by the price elasticity of demand. See the effect on tax incidence section of the Wikipedia article for “price elasticity of demand” for more info.
I traveled to Ireland this summer. Unfortunately, I found the country disappointing. The wealth seems concentrated among a small group, leaving many to toil endlessly just to afford a modest 500 square foot apartment. It appears that in their pursuit of wealth, they may have sacrificed some of their cultural heritage and traditional way of life. It's a sobering reminder that financial prosperity doesn't always equate to cultural richness or character.
Aw that's a shame, maybe the Irish should have stayed poor and continued to leave the country in droves so that when the tourists went there, they would see the romanticised vision of simple, backwards, rural Ireland they had in their heads.
It's absolutely crazy to me that the minimum wage in Ireland is triple of my own country, yet the infrastructure and housing in my home country is 100x times better.
I live in Ireland and I feel that every European country is better and more modern than here. Portugal for exemple, is better in ANYTHING compared in Ireland, except the WAGES.
"We all want to do the most good." Right after explaining how corporations, and the people running them, fleece billions in tax revenue from countries with people living in them. Never change, UA-cam. Never change.
@@MinecraftMasterNo1 It's the prisoner's dilemma. If all countries taxed corporations reasonably, then they'd all get a reasonable amount of tax revenue, but if one country is a tax haven and the other isn't, the corporations will go to the tax haven.
@@MrAwawe The other countries could put pressure on the one country to change. However, they won't do that if the people in power have something to gain.
I agree, but even then I still feel like I don't really know how they work lol. A company can avoid taxes just by transferring money back and forth through subsidiary companies? This shit doesn't make any sense
The company sets up a comapany in a country like Ireland and then charges the main company for something like the name or logo or whatever so technically the company in the other country made no profit and therefore pays no taxes@@littlekirby6
@@littlekirby6 Because the video skipped a lot to save on time. First, this video only focused on corporate net income tax. (Apple pays many other taxes in Germany). Companies can reduce net income by increasing expenses. One way to increase expenses (in the German entity) is to pay for the right to use the Apple logo. So Apple Germany pays Apple Ireland to use the logo. If the logo costs exactly as much as the gross income. The net income is 0 and Apple Germany pays tax on that amount (0).
Ehm.. it's not? No sources in the description, he says "voila" at 08:38 without having explained anything how this works in detail and why this avoids the mentioned 20% tax on profits paid to tax havens, he seems to confuse the European Commission with the Court of Justice of the EU, et cetera. This video is full of mistakes, which on such an interesting yet nuanced topic is really annoying.
as someone whos lived in Ireland since 2011 this is very interesting, i was fully aware of most of why the GDP was "inflated" but i like the attention to detail in the video
@@Art-is-craft are u mentally insane? like seriously do some basic research anywhere.. it very much is "inflated" by certain corporations, ive talked to many irish people here its almost common knowledge.
I'm Irish as Irish gets, a Connemara man to the core. I have one of the better paying jobs in my village, and I'm talking home €26,000 and some change at the end of the year. Even the CEO at my company has a salary below that per capita GDP, he makes a little under triple what I do. I would know, I work in accounts, I know what everyone I work with makes, none of us make over €80k PA.
Wow that’s very little. In the United States very uneducated people make around that working at McDonalds per year. In addition don’t have to deal with the terrible climate Ireland has….Rain and Grey cloudy skies over 300 days per year.
@@jasonknight5863You make a good point about the weather; it really is terrible here and I think I would gladly take a pay cut for some more sunshine because it's healthier and puts you in a better mood.
You get paid so little because you live in a village in Connemara. If you were in Dublin you'd be paid a lot more, because the cost of living would be a lot higher.
@@martinrea8548 agreed 👍🏼 I know I lived in County Galway for the first part of my life. I couldn’t deal with the super high taxes on everything that V.A.T at what 23 % is robbery. I never saw myself getting ahead in anything I did. And too much red tape from Government there in anything you did. Even getting a simple Driver’s Licence to pay 4,000 a year on a midget econo box 4 cylinder seemed ridiculous to me then. I’m so glad I got out of there in my early 20’s. 20 years ago. As the miserable grey weather combined with grey buildings never painted gave me depression. It’s not natural to get so little sunshine and Vitamin D. Now I live in Florida with Zero State income taxes, Palm trees 🌴 and beautiful women everywhere. Couldn’t be happier. Yeah the lowest incomes at McDonalds or Burger King is what 18$ per hour. If you want to be a bar tender or server at restaurants you’ll make far more with tips on everything but a lower wage. But accommodation is expensive but you can rent a room at people’s houses at first. Only drawback I see. If you have a way to buy a house you’ll have it made here! I wish you good luck with this winter….
Reminds me of Big property investors I use to work with. Buy shopping centres. Carry out rent reviews. Create huge revaluation reserves that they can't distribute to owners. So they drop the company into a new formation and voila Big early payouts
The lack of mention of the GNI-star metric by the Irish Central Statistics Office in this video is reprehensible. The Irish authorities are well aware of this tendency, so the Irish CSO thought of the GNI-star to measure how the Irish economy is really doing. However, for official purposes, the bloated GNI and GDP are still used as these are computed in line with international standards and make for international comparison with other countries.
Exactly. It gives the impression that the author is cherry picking in order to make the Irish government look like the bad guys. Also, the title stating that Ireland's economy is broken doesn't make sense. If Ireland pursued a more conventional economic model you'd be able to say that its economy isn't broken, but Irish people would be considerably less well off. It would only be broken if it didn't deliver significant advantages for Ireland which is not the case.
@PaulColclough47 Are you even listening to what you watch? The benefits are given to a small minority of the population employed by the Tech companies, the rest of the population are not employed by the tech companies and do not get the investment in public services because the companies effectively pay no tax. If you're not employed in tech & working class, you're not winning from this.
@@AB-zl4nh@AB-zl4nh so this take just not true through at all. Not sure if you just dont know or are spreading misinformation.... There are a 165000 employed in tech multinationals directly and another loads in the pharmaceutical sector. We've only 5 million people so staying a couple of hundred thousand is a tiny minority is just wrong. The income tax paid by these workers is the states third largest tax take. There is also a huge amount of employment generated servicing these companies. In 2023 the state also took 23 billion in corporate tax revenue. Thats a huge payout. So ya again you are just wrong. The whole country benefits hugely from these companies and would be goosed without them.
While everything should be scrutinized by the public, Ireland today lives much, much better than before, which migration charts clearly show. Many Croats go there to build wealth that is difficult to accumulate here in Croatia. My father was one of them and I can only thank Ireland (and primarily my father, of course) for the comfortable life I'm living.
I'm not from Ireland, but it seems to be fine country, it's just that it's economic success is highly inflated, but idk it doesn't seem poor. In fact peaceful, kinda modern and just very tranquil.
Yes people have to remember Ireland's history was just a constant drain of emigration. Young people would not stop leaving. The current economic success is inflated but Ireland is still doing so much better than before.
@@sonicthehedgehog513 Yep, it's actually amazing how Ireland managed to reverse the trend in such hasty and chaotic way and it actually worked. People don't give enough credit to that and there's still plenty of countries in Europe that completely failed at that or their success is much smaller and more timid. Ireland pulled the most based Uno reverse card in Europe by far. I know it's still a bit problematic country due to housing and healthcare, but as European I'm very proud of their unorthodox success.
The "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was mentioned years ago on Last Week Tonight, and it STILL sounds like a weird sex thing that should get you arrested.
I once heard late lamented RTE's Gerry Ryan do a phone-in on Irish radio ... he'd been looking at the UK Red Tops and there was something in one of those rags about "3-in-a-bed sex". So he said that was the theme for that day's phone-in, and invited all the people of Ireland who'd had some experience of it to phone in. I listened to the whole programme in a country lane in the middle of Tipperary somewhere. Not a single person phoned in. At the end Gerry said "Ah yeah well, the thing is, the UK is always a couple of years ahead of us with things like that."
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
The IMF and EU are planning to omit Irish GDP figures unless they use a suitable metric to evaluate GDP. They have a GDP per capita 3 times that of the UK, but average salaries are slightly lower than that of UK.
Isn't it the problem that there is only one way to calculate GDP and that gives rise to the anomalous number? To my knowledge the number is calculated correctly. If the CSO decided they had their own way of calculating GDP then that would be cooking the books and nobody would pay any heed to it. I understood that most authorities accepted that GDP in Ireland was so distorted by accountants moving things in spreadsheets that they switched to another number instead called Gross National Income (or something)? By the way Irish people make roughly $600 more per month on average than UK folks. $3910 Vs $3316 Techreport, Sept 2023
Ireland themselves published a modified GNI because their gross GDP figure is so skewed That said I am not sure if the EU accepts modified GNI for calculation of their budget contribution because other countries might start submitting their own matrices instead of GDP
11:56 how did the heightened activity of multinationals affect the housing market? Maybe it was a minor factor, but I feel like pointing to it as a reason for the crisis is seriously ignoring a real cause
Completely agree that multinationals aren’t the main cause (which is a painfully simple lack of supply). However, following the 2008 crash, the banks had to do a fire sale of their assets which were bought on the cheap by multinationals. The low tax rate was just the cherry on the cake which made these investments very appealing. It all served to boost the demand for housing, increasing the price and making it harder for people looking to buy homes, which increased the demand on the renter side too. As far as I see, the housing crisis would have happened anyway, but it wouldn’t be as bad if it weren’t for the multinationals being able to buy homes. This isn’t even to mention the dual economy point - since multinationals are usually paying larger salaries than Irish companies (not to all of their staff but some of them), this also increases demand and makes it even harder for lower earners to afford rent and mortgages. But as I said, the main problem is a painfully obvious lack of supply.
Majority of the pop centred in and around a tiny greater Dublin(and now spilling into Kikdare and Meath). Immigration boom. Plenty of cheap houses in the midlands or on the west coast. You can have a 3 bed family home in Leitrim for 150000 or less.
Open borders, a dysfunctional housing market, limited good housing, rent controls, housing standards to build very insulated houses that builders have decided no one can afford so they arnt being built. Its a lot of things.
It contributed to the problem through higher demand for housing by ‘expats’ and people moving to Ireland for the tech jobs. But Airbnb and the government allowing corporations to buy housing has had a much bigger impact. You are correct, Polymatter should have mentioned the bigger contributors in context or at least that there ARE bigger contributors. Otherwise it looks like a wild statement. All the politicians are landowners/landlords, so they are happy to see values increase. A bubble burst is coming.
I might have missed something but from around 6:45 to 8:30 I didn't understand why: Transfering funds from Germany to Ireland to Bermuda would mean a 20% tax on the transfer to Bermuda But transfering funds frum Germany, to Ireland, to the Netherlands, back to the OG in Ireland and only then Bermuda would mean a 0% tax. Can someone clarify?
I believe corporations will always try to avoid taxes. I am not proud that Ireland helps them to do it. But if the US system can't elect politicians who care enough to stop it, then other states will take advantage. I'm Irish and live in Dublin. I am old enough to remember how poor Ireland was when I was young, compared to many northern European countries. This video is mostly truthful and correct, even though as a polemic the creator chooses to leave out certain facts that may not support its argument. It is absolutely true that we in Ireland benefit hugely from multi-national corporation taxes, and have an unhealthy dependence on that income. I do feel the statement that Ireland had to be pressured into the OECD agreement on a minimum taxation rate of 15% is wrong - the Irish government welcomed it as it hoped it would remove the stigma of Ireland being a tax haven. Has Ireland benefitted from corporations that use accountants to game the system globally so they can pay less tax overall? Absolutely yes. The headline of this video is both right wrong. Even the Irish state doesn't pretend that the 26% GDP in one year mentioned in the video was real. In fact the Central Statistics Office of the Irish state developed a new metric called Modified Gross National Income to allow for the unrealistic impact of multinational corporations on GDI. As an Irish person and somebody who considers himself a social democrat, I am not proud of these practices, although, within the EU, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are accused of the same practices. We can, for now, ignore the bit about Apple setting its own tax rates as zero evidence is presented in the video for the argument made, and a European court found it not to be true that they got special treatment (that may change upon a second appeal). But I can understand why in the late 1980s a poor country, with a colonial history of its manufacturing industry being suppressed by the UK, and a hugely backward and inefficient agricultural economy (largely of our own making by stupid, protectionist nationalist economic policy for most of our independent history), courted multinational corporations. It had, by international standards a well-educated, and largely unemployed young population. Offering low taxes was a way to get SOME income into the economy. The video makes much of Apple coming into Ireland in 1980. But the European single market only became operative in 1993, and wasn't even a discussion back in 1980. Of course, once the single European market came into existence, the low Irish corporation tax became far more attractive. And that is how we got to this argument. But, what always surprises me about videos and arguments like this one is that the USA, the source of the vast majority of Irelands', and any other alleged tax havens', tax income, has done nothing as a state to put a stop to this. The USA was for most of the last 75 years by far the strongest economy and political powerhouse in the world. If its elected representatives were truly outraged at US corporations denying US citizens of properly due taxes they have had ample opportunity to deal with it. But they have not. Why not? Could it be that US house members and senators depend far too much on corporate donations? The best democracy money can buy?
Most irish people already know this. On top of that most are not happy about it. Despite our economy looking great on paper it is absolutely abysmal for your average resident. Normal people don't see any of these benefits and a vast majority live paycheque to paycheque.
Too expensive to set up in Ireland. Ireland has an amazing corporate regulation structure that has the right amount of regulations to encourage businesses to flourish. But has a horribly over regulated local economy were the average small business pays about 50% tax and is a nightmare to get started in. At the end of a be businesses first year of trade they have to pay double taxes so that they pay the next years tax in advance. Average worker is subjected to nearly 50% tax.
Now do Singapore; lots of billionaires with Singaporean citizenship, but nearly all made their fortunes elsewhere and are merely parking them away from their home countries' tax authorities.
Wow, reading the comments I feel sympathy for the folks living in Ireland in regard to housing after reading the comments. We live less than an hour from San Francisco in the US, and our mortgage+tax+insurance on a 5 bedroom 3 bath house (built in the 70's, bought 14 years ago) in a small city is around $2000/mo. It's affordable on our modest retirement. Other parts of the SF Bay Area are crazy high prices, though. I hope the new home building policies improve the situation for you. And I hope your government can learn to prioritize your existing population first, before bringing in more immigrants than you can afford to handle. If you fix things within Ireland first, then I would think that you would be more able to genuinely welcome immigrants as contributors who can be integrated to mutual benefit. Also sad to hear about the health care issues there. We're pretty happy with our health care overall, now on Medicare (national health care for retired people) but contracted to private suppliers. In our state of California, everybody who needs it qualifies for government health care at no cost (or at lower cost if they have enough income, or at market rates if they have lots of income). Most of that is paid for by the national Medicaid program, except coverage to unauthorized immigrants which is paid from state taxes. I would love to visit Ireland someday. And if I do, I promise not to mention my ancestry from there, as I understand it's not appreciated.
Working in Ireland after having lived in Italy several years. In three years I saved 6 times what I saved in 6 years of doing the same job in Italy. And all of that while paying a crazy high rent (that goes to irish landlords), and not giving up on small luxuries like pubs and restaurants, also run by Irish owners. So not only I saved more, but I also gave back to the community more both directly and through my taxes. I don't see a single reason why Ireland should change it's economical recipe
I grew up in rural ireland on a farm and now I'm a software engineer on 135k, the rest of my siblings are earning in the high 80s and 90s. The fact that we've gone from somewhere people leave to somewhere where people actually emmigrate to is amazing. You can actually succeed here now rather than being forced to emmigrate for basic opportunities the rest of the world takes for granted. That being said there's terrible affordability issues if you're not in tech, finance or pharma. If you are in those industries the country works for you.
The big problem is, even though these companies don’t provide nearly as much benefit as the GDP would say they do (because GDP per Capita in Ireland is a nonsense figure) we can’t get rid of the companies because our economy is built around them. So we have a group of MNC’s that don’t provide much benefits but could destroy the economy if they left, these means the government basically has no leverage over them.
Corporation tax is only part of Ireland’s tax base. Ireland is full of MNCs that manufacture real stuff making Ireland one of the biggest per capita manufacturing exporters in the world.
Anywhere in the world that big Tech moves in, they take over eventually. Its a double edged sword having them. They create lots of wealth very quickly, but none of it filters down to the actual people in Ireland. Now they Tech Billionaires own the politicians. They are just their stooges. Now they own the economy. Now they own the Irish nation. Give it a few more years. Irish people will be living in tents on the streets like Californians do. You sold your souls to the devil.
How rich are Irish? They should also consider the mean income of workers in Ireland- Its far from Luxembourg, USA, UAE. The mean Irish income is close to France and Malta.
The Celtic Tiger was the name of a (singular) boom in the 80's, not the Irish economy as a whole. Oh and the flow of migration hasn't reversed, matter of fact the Irish are still leaving en masse and most foreigners don't stay past two years for the same reasons, there's nowhere to live.
There are properties available but due to the poor infrastructure especially in transport and communication. Everything is Dublin centric and top heavy.
Nobody claimed it was. Not even the Irish Government, nor the EU as they would be taxing us extremely heavily if they thought so too. We use modified GNI here, not GDP, we haven't since Apple dumped it's IP here. But we are as wealthy as Finland in total and per capita numbers and that's pretty good. You should have spoken with an economist, economic journalist or anyone in government here and you would know that that number is used by the IMF and World Bank only and has no sway on policy or beliefs of grandeur nor a scandal. We have problems and are not Qatar. Switzerland is in a similar boat. Also,, the sudden jumps were happening because we were about to increase our corporation tax rate from 12.5% to 15% for companies worth over 500 mil, so companies were bringing IP and cash reserves here before we increased the rates. No scandal, no secret accounting. How do tiny Island attract business? Low taxes. It's the same all over.
I've heard about the nightmare of US taxes for Americans working abroad, the IRS comes after you and you pay an accountant a lot of money to deal with it. Of course corporations can fill out a 3 page form and blow it off 🤦👺
@@serbkebab2763 US taxes overall are pretty low compared to other countries. European income taxes are 2 times higher than the US and consumption taxes in Europe are 30% compared to around 8% in America
Not the only Irish statistical anomaly! I remember when a non-profit similar to Givewell (but not, if memory serves, them) did a league table of a measure of 'good global citizenship' and Ireland came out top. I found this quite unbelievable, so I dug into the measure they had used. I found the critical statistic that swung it was low population growth. The plot thickened since I was sure Ireland's birth rate was anomalously high - when I checked I found it was actually by some distance the highest in the Western world! Then I noticed that the data set used was 2008 (even though by the time it was publicized we were well into the twenty-teens). The penny dropped: that year was the financial crisis and Ireland experienced an enormous emigration in that year, enough to entirely cancel out the births in the population count! Bizarrely, although the population growth figures and the birthrate figures were right next to each other in the data source (the CIA Factbook) the statisticians had chosen to use the population growth and not the birthrate in the measure of good global citizenship. Why adding to the global population burden is fine if you export all of that extra population to other countries was never explained, but I suspect they regarded population growth as a good enough proxy for birth rate, and it probably is for most times and places. Sadly though, not for Ireland in 2008!
Never really understood what "birth rate/population growth" has to do with "good global citizenship. We can support many billions of more people on this earth, and technological advances will allow us to support even more. Shit many countries like Japan are actually going down in population. And we haven't even mentioned the solar system yet, one star system can support trillions and trillions of people on the low end.
While I'm not sure about the ethical arguments of using either population growth or population growth as a metric for "good global citizenship", this is certainly a good view into how when displacing statistics one must be clear about it, and well how easy I guess it can be to use statistics to support a view point!
@@evanray8413 Yea, I did some actual research rather than relying on memory. I was thinking of "The Good Country Index". I did engage with them at the time about using population growth rather than birth rate and it seems they actually listened! Ireland has dropped to eighth position, still pretty good, but you are shooting yourselves in the foot with the Double Irish since many of the other measures are 'relative to the size of the economy'! For example, Ireland is 29th on culture, with Belgium 1st, which does not accord with my intuition! They are still not giving any credit for immigration or asylum 'imports' or any penalty for asylum 'exports' both of which seem to me to be important factors.
Emigration didn't truly take hold in Ireland until mid 2009 rising again in 2010. April 2008 was more or less the beginning of the recession in Ireland. By the summer lots of construction work had halted. A stark rise in people going onto social welfare, shares in Anglo tanking etc. But as said the real flow of emigration hadn't yet began.
Well done on this incredibly insightful video. I'm a paddy myself and despite living outside of Dublin on 6 figure salary, funds are tight. High tax and very poor public service, i.e. public transport
The sustenance of the U.S. economy heavily relies on continuous credit and debt generation. It is anticipated that the Federal Reserve will augment the money supply, resulting in further accumulation of debt for the average American. Concurrently, foreign nations maintain a desire for the U.S. dollar, despite grappling with significant economic challenges, some of which surpass those faced by the U.S. This scenario prompts concerns regarding who will ultimately bear the consequences of these economic dynamics.
They do say gold will crash in a liquidity crunch However, many of those holding precious metals are preparing for such an event. So they are unlikely to be forced sellers. The paper market would tank and hopefully collapse.
I completely agree, which is why I value entrusting decision-making power to an investment coach. Their specialized expertise and education, coupled with their focus on leveraging risk for its asymmetrical potential and managing it as a safeguard against adverse developments, make it highly unlikely for them to underperform. I've achieved over $1.5 million in gains while collaborating with an investment coach for more than two years.
The average wage in Ireland has increased from 38k in 2000 to 53k 2022. Unemployment in the 80's was 20% + causing mass immigration. Today its below 5% despite the workforce increasing by over 200% including a significant number of Irish immigrants. GDP is a sales number and not a wealth number. It has no representation of profit which is what creates wealth. Neither does it reflect distribution. I hope it doesnt require a repeat of high unemployment to remind workers and their families what benefits these multinationals bring.
Did a google search The median annual salary for men in Ireland currently sits at €45,537 compared to €37,782 for women. The national average in 2022 was €41,824 No idea where 53k came from. We haven't jumped that high, + so many are employed but so little can actually live their life.
@roxie Statista who get their data from the CSO. Its why economist consider it a reliable source unlike google. Also you start with the median salary and then use average. Thats comparing apples and pears.
The same could (mutatis mutandis) be applied to Luxembourg, my native country. I like the reasoning with the interconnection between material and immaterial (“real and fake”) economies
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
It may not fully translate to wealth, but having visited in 1998 and then against in 2011, there was a vast, vast difference in noticeable wealth everywhere you go.
The Irish miracle is real, just not by standard GDP figures. Ireland was desperately poor, plagued by emigration and unemployment. It was Ireland's membership of EEC, then EU that dragged the country out of poverty. Before this Ireland was a broken down semi-detatched region of the UK economy. If you doubt this compare the economic fates of Northern Ireland and the Republic. Before partition the Northern Ireland economy was 5 times the size of its southern neighbour and had half the population. Today that distinction is reversed. NI also depends on an annual €10Billion subvention, Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU. GDP may be unreliable but there are plenty of other measures. Foreign direct investment is real, hence Intel is building its most modern chip fab in Ireland. This is not just pushing paper around it is fixed assets invested in Ireland. Same with Pharma, you have to actually build product. Calling it a "tax haven" like Cayman Islands or Bermuda really is just a meaningless slur. Such places allow super rich criminals to hide assets and wealth from states. That is just not possible in Ireland. No economically meaningful activity goes on in those places. If Ireland is a tax haven the so is Texas. Ireland is business friendly, to LEGAL businesses.
12:18 Fun fact, well not so fun fact . The horse prices here in Ireland are now higher than the peak of the “Celtic tiger” in 2007…which is also not too long before the recession hit. But yeah houses are silly expensive here and also doesn’t help that our government is saying we can take in more asylum seekers or refugees when for decades we’ve had a growing homelessness problem and haven’t had enough homes for our own population let alone the extra 100 thousand + people who have now come here ok top of that 😬
+1. Rarely talked about, Bulgaria offers one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe, cheap labour force and affordable commercial and private real estate.
A couple of notes: * Early in the video, there are a couple of points where you conflate GDP with wealth. By itself, GDP just means productivity. This is clearer later on in the video. * Some good measures of whether Ireland's economic miracle is "real" or not would be to look at just the take-home pay of its residents, or the household consumption part of its GDP (theoretically, these should be equal). I can see the latter is only 34% of its GDP (compared to 68% in the US and 66% in the UK), which implies that take-home pay per capita is really only about US$ 35,000. (The same math for the US comes out to about $43,000.) Does that check out?
The mean take home pay in the uk is skewed by the City of London mean take home pay. Ireland's mean take home pay is about €2,000 more the uk without the City of London...
This is the absolute best explained video on Ireland's economy. After watching quite a few of them that basically all say the same thing and explain it very simplistically, this one has definitely shed light on the matter for me! Thank you!
They should really fix the GDP calculation. Like removing the oil prices from inflation numbers, but keeping the effect of oil prices on goods and services. Similarly if IP is not being used to create something useful, like the ones held by trolls, should be excluded. Is gambling included in GDP? Maybe it should be excluded as well.
The fact that we call this a "tax strategy" not a crime or theft, is the reason why the world have so many poor people and why capitalism is failing for the poor (or working to keep them that way).
I'm hoping to retire next year at 55. My goal next year is to be more serious and consistent with my investments I've been investing since I was 22. 2024 is going to be more serous for me investing consistently for the long term. starting to save for a house down payment. I want to invest more than $105k, but I'm not sure on how to mitigate risk
Its unclear which stocks and sectors will lead the market in the next uptrend. It is advisable to diversify while retaining 70-80% in secure investments. looking at your budget, you should consider financial advisory.
A good number of people discredit the effectiveness of financial advisors, but over the past 10years I've had a an advisor consistently restructure and diversify my portfolio/expenses and I've made over $3million in gains... might not be a lot but i find myself secure financially
Samuel Peter Descovich is the analyst that helps me. He has a large following and is easily found online. He has extensive understanding as I have made so much since following him.
Yes, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft are not the only companies or entities to take advantage of this tax stratagem (I don't want to call it a loophole, tax law either allows a certain activity or prohibits it). Guess who else does that? That's right, the Rolling Stones. It was in a report on where the rights to their song catalog are being kept when I first heard about the "Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich" term. All the royalties for sixty years worth of Rolling Stones songs are taxed not in Britain but in Bermuda . Conceivably, when they go on tour, the touring division pays the IP division that holds the rights to the songs for the privilege of being allowed to perform them, and all the millions of dollars generated by the concerts flows to the Bermudas, leaving nothing but a negative or break-even balance sheet. So Jagger's stint at the London School of Economics wasn't a waster after all.
It's time to replace GDP with some other way of measuring a countries general economical status. Having mega corporations boosts the GDP of a country, but it doesn't impact the general population .
@@Art-is-craft Too simplify the problem with GDP : One billionaire's wealth lifts the general income of a million poor people on paper .That's not an accurate representation.
@@spiritualanarchist8162 GDP is the only means of understanding a countries productivity. A billionaire worth has no bearing on productivity. It is the only means of generalisation in relation to a country. I think you are referring to living standards such as career worth, housing access, education and healthcare. Those issues in a high GDP society like Ireland are more about policy and how interested people are in the country. Some of the main problems Ireland faces are easily solved but will require public pressure rather than government activity.
@@Art-is-craft My mistake, I mean the Billionaire's income. And obviously the 'productivity 'of global mega companies and how this distorts the GDP per capita. nominal GDP is useful for comparing national economies on the international market. Not for the actual state of the country's population . Just a few examples. Ireland . A fantastic GDP ,yet not reflected in the living standard of the general population.Why ? companies & tax schemes. The Gold distribution via London is another beauty. A constant flow of Gold from outside Europe gets 'parked temporary ' before it's distributed to it's ultimate distentions . It's mere presence influences the GDP, while not having any real economic effect whatsoever.
I'm studying to become a teacher in Germany. For us, Klafki is the most important education theorist. He says, education has three levels: the elemtar, the foundation and the exmplatory. Everytime you have to teach all three. For example you need to teach about power in societies. Then the middle part would be some conflict like democracy vs authoritarianism. (in the 80s it would have been "communism"). Then you pick one example for you students, e.g. Ukraine's struggle for democracy. The core never changes, the middle part changes very slowly and the examples are so plentyful, you can find another all the time. But everything we do in school is always just an example and can be changed. However, the exaples have to me relevant. Relevance comes in different forms: it can be a good example because it's important for the students either now or later in life or because it has some inherent or classical value.
I wish countries like the US and Australia had the guts to do more to stop money being moved to tax havens like Ireland, Singapore etc to avoid paying tax on it. Its unfair that the average person has to pay all this tax yet big companies like Chevron, Apple, News Corp, Santos, Facebook and others get away with not paying tax by using these tax havens.
Meanwhile it’s August 2024. Rents have spiralled totally out of control and house prices have nearly doubled in the past 5 years. The healthcare system is a complete mess with people dying on trolleys in hospital hallways (especially Limerick) and waiting lists of 2-3 years for critical treatments or surgery. Adult people, even couples, have to rent rooms in private homes in order to have a place to sleep. And that’s not even just in the big cities like Dublin or Galway or Cork. That’s everywhere!
I visited this year and it saddened me to see the disparity. All the "funny money" slushing about has created huge inequalities. A lot of the county land is just being bought up by the new rich (Irish) and just left vacant, turned into golf courses or gated estates. Yet in cities young people have nothing to do and can't afford basic life. A lot of young people want to leave. It's such a beautiful country with warm people, I wish thing were better.
The Irish Economic Model is High Paid Employment and High Value (both in Goods and Services) Exports lead. In the 60's, the Economic Strategy saw this as the way to make Ireland a success as Ireland was an Island far away from either the USA or Europe but between both. As Ireland had only one Natural Resource...... People. The Government as heavily invested in Education and promoting Ireland with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, the CTR & Business friendly environment was part of promoting Ireland, to get high paying jobs into Ireland. Other than Pharma/Big Tech and other producers of High-value goods, there is Airplane Leasing, which was set up in Shannon in the 60's by GE Credit Corporation, the Irish Financial sector as grown by 25% since 2016 mostly in the Asset Management Sector. Ireland receives a lot of tax from Companies, so for a Tax Haven Ireland isn't very good at it. Corporation tax receipts for 2022 €22.6 billion and it is estimated to be greater this 2023, total Irish tax revenue was €110 billion in 2022, The UK, for instance, in the 2021/2022 tax year, received £915 billion (€1,055 billion) in tax revenue but business rates only amounted to £22 billion (€25.5 billion).
8:37 can someone explain how is this different ? Apple Ireland 1 still need to transfer the profits to known tax heaven and therefore pay the 20% tax. How having two apples in Ireland bypass that ?
18:36 Actually the reason is as you mentioned earlier in the video. Such a significant portion of our annual budget is from corporate tax. 10 companies produce 60% of it and the top 3 companies produce 1/3rd of it. Without that money our annual budget would drop massively and plunge us into austerity. Raise the corporate tax rate, or go after Apple for the tax they don't pay, and they'll just leave for another cheaper tax haven, and we'll be left in the dust.
Im irish, so I'm probably biased, but I dont think "fake" is true. I have been employed by companies like Workday and Qualtrics. My friends have worked for Google, Amazon, Coinbase, Twitter and Meta, Datadog, etc, and I have friends and family working for some of the largest pharma companies in the world. These people range from software engineers, accountants, salespeople, lab technicians, etc. These are real jobs, adding value, consuming in the local economy, and paying taxes.
What could derail this cozy relationship is the Irish electorate. The consequences of growth ( high house prices and immigration) are the hottest political issues. Sinn Fein, a socialist party, has been growing in popularity for some time. Videos like this also help people understand the hidden wiring which underpin Irelands economic model.
Sinn Fein is a "faux socialist " party you will soon see how socialist they are if they get into government, it's not that they don't have party members with a strong social "istish" ethos and policies which say the same ...it's just that as EU members and with an "unreal" economy socialism isn't really a possibility, sadly they will find this out if they come to power , and will also come under great pressure to dismantle this cosy tax haven thing and also be under pressure to abandon the EU .,.....interesting times ahead ....all bubbles eventually burst ...
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
@@tjnak Yup, and consumers benefit from all tax, so it's a virtuous cycle. The important part is to ensure that corporations do not pocket more than they need.
I'm Irish, and would like to comment on the seeming conflict in interest between the Irish government and the Irish people. Those who have defended Apple's / Ireland's dealings in government are largely vilified by the younger generation. Enda Kenny, and to a greater extent, Bertie Ahern, in the eyes of the younger generations, are symbols of filth and gluttony and greed, defending their own interests. Many current Irish politicians also refuse to address the housing crisis, as a large proportion of them are landlords themselves, who profit massively from the inflated rent costs. We dont oust these politicians because we have an aging population, with the majority of older demographics voting by loyalty and not by way of reason, leading to the same parties being voted in over and over. The older generation do not suffer the majority of the problems they created (most old people already own their home and do not work, so do not experience the housing crisis the same way), and so their minds can't be changed. Thankfully though this is beginning to change, as the population churns. The upcoming election may be the first election where the next-biggest party (SInn Fein) has a shot at power, and that prospect is forcing the current parties to bow more and more to pressure.
This is old news. GNI* was introduced by the Irish Central Bank to correct these statistical anomalies. "Modified gross national income (also Modified GNI or GNI*) is a metric used by the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) to measure the Irish economy rather than GNI or GDP. GNI* is GNI minus the depreciation on Intellectual Property, depreciation on leased aircraft and the net factor income of re-domiciled PLCs." Anyone still using GDP is only fooling themselves.
The Celtic tiger was a paper tiger and only the big US corporation made money from the tax loopholes in Ireland. The wealthiest persons in Ireland are corporate persons rather than human persons, meaning the wealth is not pumped back into the economy but held in banks on the island, which artificially inflates the wealth of the country. However these US corporations could leave the country and transfer their wealth to some place else which would completely rewrite the wealth status of the country.
Apple was the first foreign technology firm in Ireland in the 1980s? Must have missed IBM and Siemens... A lot of trust being placed in only one side of the argument.
Didn't Digital Equipment Corporation arrive in 1971? and I'm not sure they were the first major Tech Manufacturer. HP, Analog Devices, Wang, Intel? I knew people who joined Wang from the Marine Radio School in Limerick as there were no technological colleges yet to turn out technicians! That was earlier than the 80s!
I'm sure there were loads. Polymatter has just decided to take one side and presented this as fact. It's mostly a load of shite - but people have outsourced their critical thinking these days so I'm guessing much of will be taken at face value without further thought. All those profits that aren't being taxed here are due to the US. They aren't due to Ireland or any other EU country. All the value comes from the US. It's just that the US is ran by corporations that it refuses to fix it's own issues. It's not even as if the money is sitting in bank accounts doing nothing in Ireland or real tax havens. Much of it has been invested in the form of US bonds and treasury securities. It's already sitting in the US system.
I loved the way he uses footage of Michael D Higgin when saying we were preasured, yet he had nothing to do with that. Our president is a figure head with little to no power
I wouldn't say it's an illusion. Corporate tax revenue was €25bn last year, that's real money and 5 to 10 times higher than comparable countries per capita. In addition, these multinational corporations employ 350,000 people in Ireland and invest billions on plant, machinery and services. That's real money too. I think it's fair to say Ireland is a very rich country, but not as rich as GDP implies as companies will move their profits home (mostly to the US). And no, it's not a tax haven. It's just a country with a lower rate of corporate tax and access to large markets like EU.
Correct. Every country plays it's advantages, that is what is happening here. The "real versus fake" economic analysis presented here is a complete fabrication.
The average income in Ireland is still about 50k usd a year, while Switzerland with a similar but slightly lower gdp per capita, has an average income of over 90k usd a year.
Ya but look at Irelands improvements to economy, standard of living, employment rates etc etc. we were dead last in Europe in the 80s. We're now in the top quarter or near the very top for many measures. It's been an incredible performance
@@Dewaters65 that's not actually true though. We're behind in most areas and people are angry about it. Housing is unaffordable for most people. We're not tapping our renewable energy potential off the west coast. Our transport system is shit, e.g. no rail link to Dublin airport. Healthcare system chronically overburdened. Welfare sanctions ensure many people are excluded from society altogether, cue riots. Ireland is not at all the rosy land you're depicting. The establishment connives to keep any party who could actually change things out of power. Also, this tax haven stuff is embarrassing af.
@@unexpectedly1468 it is true though. By most global stats on standards of living, happiness, health, wealth we are near the top. Stop trying to make up things to fit your narrative. Transport here is middle of the road, not great not terrible. The metro would be nice.to be airport but it's not going.to improve people lived that much lol😂 yes we have a housing and health crisis but so does most developed economies so comparatively we're still doing very well. We extremely rich for a tiny nation with no natural resource to speak of.
@@unexpectedly1468 also stop being a gowl, who give af about the tax stuff, it's giving us a competitive advantage. If we didn't do it we still be like it was in the 70 and 80s, a total hole of a place that no one wanted to live in
Hi there! I want to personally thank everyone for watching PolyMatter in 2023. I hope you've enjoyed our videos this year and look forward to making more next year. In the meantime, I can't think of a better way to start 2024 than to make a charitable donation to save and improve lives with today's sponsor, GiveWell. For a limited time, new donors can get their entire donation matched (up to $100, while supplies last), just by choosing "UA-cam" and then "PolyMatter" at www.givewell.org Happy new year! -Evan
Can I donate to your education?
keep the videos coming my man!
Why then US citizen can't have this! No tax for me, tax for you, mentality of the ultra wealthy.
Long may the majority believe this is a good summation of the the Irish economy!
@@donfalcon1495
It's not though
I came to Ireland for college, stayed, worked and married. What drove me to come back to the country is that despite earning money just under the second income tax bracket, I was unable to find and afford to rent an appartament where I could live privatly with my wife. All professionals I worked alongside with are just renting rooms for crazy amounts of money. For the last year I lived 2h comute one way and still payed 1850 Eur for a scruffy, poorly isolated 1 bedroom appartament with a psycho landlord. I learned to love Ireland, but it seemed to hate me.
That's sad, I hate the situation that's developed over here with our psychopathic money obsessed government.
Where were you working and where were you living? Dublin traffic is very bad but you can get to Dublin from Cork in Three hours.
@@roryoneill9444 I lived in the town of Wicklow, during commute hours it took me 2h to get to Spencer Dock, and the same back
Slaves cant afford things even when marketed as citizens.
@@MrMmbosuno you can’t
Ireland is listed as rich but Irish people barely have wage levels to match increasing cost of goods and services and its near impossible to ever buy a home. Its increasingly difficult to even afford rental costs and the increasing inward migration of refugees is helping create a further demand for housing that just cannot be met. The massive centralisation of everything in Ireland on Dublin also absolutely does not help.
yep that last point hardly anyone brings up most modren jobs are exclusive to dublin since our other cities are tiny and dated in comparison its a joke
Couldnt agree more. Its a shame that companies are still hell bent on bringing people back to the offices. WFH worked for 2-3 years during covid so it proves it can work. If people could WFH it would decenteralise everything with Dublin. The rent pressures may drop if people can live in the midlands and west but still earn a decent salary.
WFH can literally solve so many issues like rent pressure, commuting times (even for those who need to be on the road will benefit with less traffic), child care, environmental impact etc.
I suspect these companies are tied into long leases in modern developments and dont want to see them empty... and our Government do not have the backbone to bite the hand that feeds them...
@@markf4258 Your completely right about WFH. Its not just the companies though that are interested in profiteering. Most of the politicians in the Dail are either landlords themselves or indirectly connected to ones and they have a vested interest in seeing high rental rates so they can maximise their own profits. Its a cross-party issue and leads to the absurb situation where our leaders publically bemoan the sprialling rents and rising prices whilst their own rental holdings fill their coffers higher and higher. If anything the Irish public are too tolerant of our authority figures. Any other country would have brought down the government with a general strike by this point but modern Ireland? Nah.
I feel like if they let us WFH they'd have to acknowledge that many of us don't HAVE a home 😅
@@em97c fair point, but if you were able to obtain a salary from any of the Dublin tech, finance, investment and real estate firms but live in Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo etc, you could definitely afford a decent place to live. The problem is once your forced to commute to Dublin, your left with having to pay high prices in surrounding counties to Dublin. In this day and age, the vast majority of work can be done online, 2020-2022 proved that.
I lived in Ireland for a year. Moved there for a position in a big tech. After reading the GDP and growth, I expected a thriving nation, and Dublin on a growth course. What I found was a crumbling society with barely any infrastructure in contrast to other Western European economies. Dublin became a city that preyed on big-tech workers and ostracized locals by monopolizing and inflating the housing market to a ridiculous degree so that only desperate migrants with high tech salaries would agree to the leases while the average Irish citizen was priced out of their own city or forced to live in ridiculous conditions. Not to mention it is common for foreign students to share a moldy and unkempt house with 40 other people. It was abundantly clear the country was hanging by a thread relying on the big tech.
I get what you're saying but if you're surrounded by tech workers and the tech industry you probably can't appreciate there's a whole other country getting on with its business outside of that bubble. Never in my whole life in Ireland have I considered tech the lifeblood of my country.
I'm Irish and work in the tech sector and this is all true. Its going to come crashing down at some point. Maybe soon.
@@SprocketHoleswe're great at enjoying ourselves while the going is good though 😅
@@SprocketHolesI wouldn’t hold your breath. While these experiences are valid, they’re anecdotal and all the figures for our country are pointing the right way
So true.
I'm Irish, born and reared, but when you said "Ireland is the only English speaking country in the EU" - I genuinely had to pause and think; is that true!! 😅🤣
It's not, English is an official language of Malta too!
@@TheIrishLad06 Malta is also there...
Malta and Cyprus both ex British colonies
@Person11068Irish is a language and is spoken but by less than 10% of the population fluently, mostly in the rural west.
@@conalllynch7840false Malta’s NATIONAL language is Maltese that’s what comes first. Also it’s half a million people ridiculous how we call that a country
Never look at GDP per capita only look at Median Personal Income is my rule! If money doesn’t react the people it can leave the country as quick as it came!
True
Nah, Ireland is an outlier. GDP is still quite a reliable measurement but not isolated of course. The ultimate measure with probably be median disposable income tho. That cuts straight to the bone of just how much money people have after living costs.
GDP is not a gold standard of measuring productivity.
Even without the tax issues, irelands manufacturing output is immense, mainly because the manufacturer goods have high profit margins ; pharma, technology and med devices. That alone is enough to skew GDP.
@Person11068 Bro thinks India is a third world country whereas Nigeria is a medium developed country 😂😂
@@fatboyRAY24GDP can easily be boosted by government spending like the local governments in China regularly do
Having lived in Ireland for a decade i can say without the shadow of a doubt that the whole "second wealthiest nation" thing is a mirage. The housing crisis makes it so that you can be wealthy enough to live in a 500k house that is actually an old 2 bedroom 1 bathroom with poor insulation and no private garden a 40 min commute from town, you're still living in a house worth half a million, and PAYING for it! But really are you wealthy or is the economic state of affairs forcing you to live like that, cause I'm sure your money would be worth a lot more elsewhere.
Same here. After 10 years I'm calling it quits. What used to cost 100k is now 300k. What used to cost 250k is now 600k or even higher.
In 10 years time, it's become impossible to buy a property here. The competition is so extreme that overbidding is still a reality here. In fact, it's the norm.
There's many other EU countries that still have affordable houses. Mass-immigration and government corruption together with the financial repressions by the banks aren't being discussed in the broken Irish media. The media is complicit as they're being paid by those very institutions and therefor directly benefit from maintaining this broken and fraudulent economic reality.
It isn't the second richest country but the miracle is real. You should have seen how poor Ireland was in the 1980's. Real poverty, food insecurity, mass emigration. The figures are bogus but the economy has grown hugely, and with real exports.
But you’re still in Ireland?
aside from housing and local services, your relative wealth still gives you immense purchasing power over things like fuel, commodities, and services from outside the country.
That's what a decade of no new homes being built does.
Irish, 31, studied and worked my whole adult life. I struggle to pay rent.
Thats the way the Zionist syndicate intend it. You are just another cog toiling in the socialist system while all of the real wealth is transferred to the top by the fiat banking cartel in collusion with their criminal friends in the government.
A lot of struggle was brought on by COVID and war inflation. Our situation was not half as bad 5 years ago
It wasn't as bad but it was still crazy expensive to rent it buy @@123brizy
EXACTLY
@@123brizy You might not have been struggling 5 years ago but plenty of others were.
The really sad thing is that this 'creative accounting' impacts negatively on ordinary Irish citizens.A GDP of €104k per head compared with a mean gross salary of €45k distorts all economic planning, including contributions to the EU budget. The influx of a small but highly paid expat community results in cost of living for all increasing, especially house prices & rents. Yeah, the government gains, but the multinational corporations are by far the biggest beneficiaries.
And the government has mostly spent the tax windfall on importing yet more foreigners, who they hope will be a more friendly and loyal voterbase than the natives. Also the multinationals haven absolutely disproportionate impact on our legislation.
People here say we can't live without the multinationals, I don't think we can live with them.
Rip
GDP has nothing to do with salaries, if salaries were the same as GDP then every company in Ireland would make no profit LMFAO.
That said our GDP is about 20% bloated due to the assets of multinationals and our airline leasing companies assets passing through the country. Gross national income is what we mostly use, not GDP.
GDP is actually an outdated metric due to globalization that's why modified GNI came into being.
@@peterhoulihan9766
"And the government has mostly spent the tax windfall on importing yet more foreigners, who they hope will be a more friendly and loyal voterbase than the natives"?
Do you enjoy babbling nonsense?
The tax windfall, most recently, was one reason why the Irish government was able to lavish around Euro12 BILLION on the Irish people to deal with the cost of living crisis.
No, tax revenue is NOT spent on importing ANYONE.
People come to Ireland because we have a successful economy.
And NONE of them can vote in Irish referenda, presidential elections and general elections.
IF legally resident, EU/EEA citizens can vote in local and European elections.
IF legally resident, Third Country citizens can vote in local elections only.
If any of them secure Irish citizenship, then they obviously acquire all the rights associated with that citizenship.
Our current government is a three-party coalition.
So which party are these foreigners supposed to be loyal to? Fianna Fáil? Fine Gael? The Irish Green Party?
And which IRISH voters are being disloyal to any party in Ireland, by virtue of being Irish?
"People here say we can't live without the multinationals, I don't think we can live with them"?
OK, we can add basic ignorance of economics to the long list of things you prefer to know nothing about....
Back in reality, the multinational sector directly employs between 12% and 15% of the Irish labour force.
Back in reality, the multinational sector pays well above the norm, and thus exerts upwards pressure on wage levels in Ireland.
Back in reality, the multinational sector's presence in Ireland has driven a massive increase in third level education here, as well as forcing domestic employers to uo their game.
Your entire post is incoherent tripe....
@@LeoVaradkarDestroyedIreland
Bullshit.
The claim about "Shit wages..." is complete nonsense.
"...lack of culture..."?
What does that even mean?
Irish culture has never been stronger.
Yes we have a high cost of living, and we also have a very high STANDARD of living.
Back in reality, I am Irish, have spent half my life outside the country, and I can remember just how bloody awful Ireland was back in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s.
Things are incomparably better for the overwhelming majority of our hugely larger population.
I can’t believe a big UA-camr did a thing on check the box treasury regulations 😂
As a US tax lawyer, all I have to say is FINALLY. Because this is only scratching the surface of the shenanigans and the games you can play by separating entity form for corporate/liability and tax purposes
Can you add to this comment with some knowledge of your own, like what has he missed or what should I look up if I want to know more?
Then elaborate…..no one stopping you
I didnt understand a thing...
I could have sworn he had done a video on Ikea, which does the same thing.
Economics Explained did a similar video a few days ago
Interestingly Apple does not have a single apple store in the Republic of ireland. I assume there is some tax reason for this. There is one in Belfast and every other medium sized EU/UK City but not Dublin or Cork where they have a facility for over 40 years. So much for serving their Irish "community".
This is a good video and true. People on the ground are struggling with enormous house prices and a tech generation with a lot of money living beside the 'real' economy of teachers, nurses etc. The length and dept of the connections means Ireland is quite entwined in these companies. Many execs and others have lived here and are from here and the work ethic is more American than European. No unions in these big tech companies. So beyond tax, they have a lot of reasons to stay, location, work force, language, culture, connectivity to the US and a mutual understanding of our people. Irish companies employ as many people in the US as US companies employ here for the moving of profits means Ireland is making fortunes from wealth earned elsewhere. We are still too dependant on those few companies and this remains a problem. When you have your hand in the lions mouth, you stroke its back. The wealth illusion is proving painful for many who can't find a way to leave home and it is coming to a crux with elections this year largely about housing.
Well said about the lack of Apple Stores in the Republic of Ireland. Was going to mention this too.
Ireland needs to ditch the EU and become a US territory. You will have near complete autonomy but enjoy all the benefits of a US state
Apple employ 3000 people in cork , and more in dublin
@stevozrepto5558 yes I know and still there is not a single apple store in the Republic. One of the wealthiest and most tech oriented countries in the world does not have a single apple store in spite of there being 3000+ people working for apple here and they declaring huge profits in this country. Does that not seem odd at all? Belfast, Manchester etc have a store but Dublin doesn't?
Yes, that is very odd indeed. Wonder what the explanation for that.
I watched two companies I work for in the past, both listed and ranked, do this exact tax cheating in Ireland. And it is tax cheating. Only difference is when you do it, you can go to jail like Capone, and when a company does it, they are rewarded.
consumers pay all tax
@@tjnakyep. And corporations and the 1% have been slowly molding the tax code to be that way since the 1980s. Arguably even the 70s.
Class warfare has been going on for over 50 years against middle class and poor folk.
VAT, Sales tax, Payroll tax, Income tax, Customs Duty, Property tax, Dividend tax, etc.
Apple pays enormous taxes to all countries it operates in.
This video only focused on corporate net income tax.
Speaking of Capone, the 3-step graph at 17:37 is just how money laundering works.
@@Kriophoros We are so used to being fleeced by our governments that whenever we see a country with friendly tax rates, we automatically label them as tax havens.
I have lived in Dublin about 5 years and saw the inflated housing market, it was a nightmare that led to homeless crisis
You got forced to market yourself and/or others as homeless (when homes dont exist outside of fiction)?
My cousin lives just outside Dublin and pays €1000 a month for a room in a house, and he's quite lucky at that. One of the reasons I'm terrified of the future and housing issue
Unless you bought a home….six years ago.
The homeless crisis has nothing to do with lack of housing. They are not connected issues. Lack of houses just means a very expensive market. The homeless crisis is down to lack of mental health crisis, lack of welfare emergency provision and so on.
I am an irish person suffering because of the housing crisis here. I have been looking for a place to rent since November last year and still have not found a place. On Ireland's leading property website, where the majority of private landlords and lettings agent's do business, there is just under 2000 properties available for rent in the entire country. Competition is incredibly stiff. It is very disheartening. I am lucky to have a roof over my head, there are those in much more desperate need than me.
That is what happens when a culture allows its government to manage everything from healthcare, housing, education, roads and so on. They cannot even repair potholes yet the Irish government collects 4.5 billion in road duties but only spends 1.5 billion.
I'm late, but I'm a Canadian who's mom immigrated from Ireland. She was raised in the Grand canal docks. One day, she told me she was reliving her years in Ireland after talking about housing. I hade no idea what she meant. She was right about this at least
4:32 - this isn't accurate. It was an accountant employed by Apple who found the loophole, which was an existing one from when Ireland was attempting to attract manufacturing jobs. It wasn't a loophole by itself, but the way it interacted with the peculiarities of US tax law made it one. What they Irish government _actually_ did was back off and do nothing about it because they didn't want to lose the jobs and tax income.
cite a source
Reality.
@@P________ The Tax Acts. @ talideon is right. I was amused when a US Congress committee was fulminating about these corporate practices a few years ago. They are only possible because of US tax law which, as the video says, allows US multinationals to park their earnings outside the US and not pay US tax on them.
I'm a Irish mental health professional and educator. These headline economic figures can make for Kafkaesque reading when you work on the frontline in these services, which are rapidly disintegrating. Schools and hospitals have been in a state of permanent crisis for about 15 years with immense waiting lists and overcrowding, but the last three years have been truly shocking. The worst of the worst has been in children's services. In certain parts of the country, there are effectively no paediatric mental health services - and by that I don't mean overly long waiting lists or under resourced facilities under constant pressure. I mean nothing - if an individual under 18 has a mental health crisis or is displaying indications of a serious disorder or developmental issue, the best they might get is an appointment in four or five YEARS. If they are not that lucky, they may be told that they are simply not a candidate for mental health services. That this is happening in a nation that allegedly is one of the wealthiest in the world and currently has a budget surplus is profoundly frustrating to contemplate.
I "managed" to be consulted by public hospital outpatient in 9 weeks.Corporate VHI must have played part. However despite extensive diagnostic evaluations
(incl. 20page long Questionaires for family member /parent , wife/partner,work colleague or boss ) and conclusion ☆severe adult ADHD
..leading expert and head department decided to prescribe Antidepressants .3 months of tweaking dosage yielded nothing (apart job loss 70kpa+p&b+VHI.) Then 12 weeks of no meds - just therapy with person right from studies/ 1st patient yeey / and then upon my request on consultation with "headmaster" I was told Adult ADHD doesn't exist-contrary to his own diag....
I've been through the healthcare system here. It's dogshit. I went through school, looking back I was clearly a troubled child, no one in school noticed or cared. Then fell into a pit of despair, eventually tried to get help. Wait nearly 2 years to get some counselling. Have 6 sessions and then be told that's it. "Refer back to GP" Pinged and ponged around like a fucking hot potato.
I'm in a better place now (not great, but better than I was at least) but it's no thanks to the Irish health care service.
I live in a good sized town in Donegal. A 3-bed house will cost you 3-400,000 here. And we have no public facilities except a small library, the primary school is literally crumbling and mouldy on the outside. The old wooden windows are rotted. Its a tough place to live.
Crumbling services and lack of housing has nothing to do with wealth.
@@Art-is-craft Well it has something to do with wealth in general, as lack of wealth can cause such outcomes. I'm guessing that you mean that in Ireland today the problem is not lack of wealth, but how that wealth gets allocated?
not to be pedantic, but some of the B-Roll used in this is a little questionable as you keep showing the UK not Ireland. 15:52 is the UK, 2:10 is the Northern Ireland legislature and nothing to do with the Republic's Taxes and 3:00 is a the British PM Harold Wilson who has nothing to do with Irish tax laws.
At the tail end of the 3:00 clip you can see Sean Lemas for a second. But the point is sound. There’s a number of questionable clips. That happens when you just dump search terms into stock photo/video sites, without political/historical knowledge. Plus the stock footage of Dublin is often tourist areas full of foreign tourists, not Irish people. The fella pulling the pints at 18:46 is in a British pub, we don’t pump pints the way the British do. Really opens my eyes to other Polymatter videos, presumably just as sloppy.
15:52 victoria square in Belfast, Northern Ireland 😀
Yeah, I wondered if anyone else noticed the Belfast footage at 15:52 😂 maybe a careless stock footage search for "Ireland" brought it up
They're all jealous. If they could have what Ireland, they'd take in a heartbeat.
@@ozymandiasm.h.5063
What has Ireland got? New York prices for third world earnings and reducing wealth of the population.
9:20
It was never obscure to the law. Every tax lawyer in the world knows of the double Irish /Dutch sandwich scheme but generally this falls under tax avoidance, not evasion
consumers pay all tax
@@tjnak you might be talking about consumption taxes/VAT which fall under indirect tax. Here we're talking about direct tax (corporate, individual, income, property, etc)
Corporate needs to pay tax too.
But they are too privileged to contribute back equally to society that propped it up.
@@ayanned corporations pay tax everywhere , they're just good at finding states with certain exceptions or caveats made for their interpretation
@@ayanned VAT, Sales tax, Payroll tax, Income tax, Customs Duty, Property tax, Dividend tax, etc. Apple pays a lot of tax that is not just net income tax.
Also, what's wrong with enriching the world with a nice new product? Why isn't that fantastic just by itself?
As a lay observer living in Dublin, I see the construction sector booming, lots of work, lots of cranes throughout the city & suburbs. In cities there is work for anyone in low skilled work for €15 per hour. At 40 hours per week that should be a decent income. The cost of housing is so high that it’s common for people to spend 50% and more on rent. In that situation it is near impossible today save money and try to buy a property.
Many young graduates go to greener pastures; AUS, US, CAN or GB.
Meanwhile migrant arrival numbers have been high for some time (very high as a proportion of total population,even when compared with other EU nations). Public services have limited capacity, homelessness is steadily rising. We cannot house our current population, the construction sector is pretty much running at capacity (relying heavily on EU migrant labour; high skilled and low skilled workers). The number of new residential units is nowhere near demand, it takes long term planning to promote trades in schools and build a competent workforce, there is a shortage of skilled tradesmen currently. Maybe we can incentivise young male migrants to take up apprenticeships and become the builders we need.
Ireland is headed for some difficult decisions, we cannot continue to expand the population at triple the rate that we expand the housing stock.
One of the few sectors that is wealth creating is agriculture. Irish beef fetches good prices internationally. Our dairy is of the highest quality too. Most of what is produced is exported, bringing in valuable € to balance trade.
Recently government policy and mumblings have been increasingly negative toward the beef & dairy producers because of methane emissions. Talk of culling cows to drastically reduce herd numbers and imposing carbon taxes on the farmers.
I worry that our elected leaders are not just self serving weasels (as any of us would expect) but they are also incompetent… they are busy texting while at the wheel during a slow motion car crash.
I don’t pretend to have the solution, just lots of questions.
I think its a case that they are corrupt. Most being landlords themselves and the lack of control we see around that industry.
But i also think they are incompetent, like they do obvious things like giving friends big contracts and then the project is driven to extremes in pricing. Thinking of the childrens hospital specifically
@@Ion_TheTrashB3ast there is definitely an air of entitlement about our TDs. Like a smugness that oozes out of them.
Once elected, they’re up on the pig’s back for life, the pensions are massive and they’re not shy in claiming every possible penny of expenses while they’re still in the job.
I voted SF last 2 elections but I’m getting cold feet, Mary Lou is my local TD & she had precious FA to say about the migrants & protests in East Wall last year. They seem happy enough with the current lack of control over our borders (with regard to non EU migrants).
Money is the root of all evil.
Let's not pretend that the construction sector is running on full. Ireland is allergic to building high density housing. They simply don't do it. There isn't a single high rise apartment building in Galway in spite of the fact that the city desperately needs it, yet the housing estates are shining with brand new single family housing with all surfaces paved for the 2-3 cars expected to accompany them.
Ireland needs to start planning ahead.
All very true except I’d say the young no longer look to the UK as a greener pasture like they do with Australia and Canada. Having come from the UK to Ireland for education (the FFI was a genuine miracle and granted me an education that my own govt couldn’t) in post Brexit, post Austerity, current conservative govt and just general imperial decline syndrome the UK is just rough as hell to live in right now. The bread is too expensive and the govt hates the circuses. It’s just very angry and tense, all over the world right now, but particularly in the UK.
Second highest Highest GDP in Europe with rampant homelessness and poverty. It's honestly shameful as an Irishman to see what's happening in my homeland.
Most if not everyone I know that are my age either have emigrated, are in the process of it or at least have it as a goal, this country has very little prospects for a mid 20 year old. Rent has skyrocketed with police (Garda) regularly assisting if not entirely carrying out illegal evictions (Look up spicebag's painting in relation to this).
Most if not all socializing happens with alcohol involved, don't get me wrong I love a few pints here and there but when it's multiple nights out a week on the sauce it gets very repetitive.
Our health services while staffed with some of the most hard working and talented professionals is so woefully mismanaged it's sickening. Regular 10-20+ hour waits in A&E to be seen for symptoms ranging from small afflictions to symptoms causing serious concern. The government have been trying to build a children's hospital for years costing upwards of 2 Billion Euro and from reports is under-equipped and in need of securing more funding for completion, is honestly quite astounding how blatantly mismanaged the whole situation is and yet nothing is done as the health minister is 'one of the lads'.
The majority of our towns and cities have become centered on tourism and catering to that market as much as possible so Airbnb and the like are rampant again amplifying the strain on the housing market.
It's all just quite depressing to be honest. I want to sing the praises of my countrymen as honestly they're a great bunch of lads, it is true that you'll never beat the Irish, there's just a unique side to us that make us likeable for want of a better explanation however that fact makes it all the harder because it feels like the younger generation inevitably have to leave it all behind to find better opportunities.
Great vid man, A Chára, P.
Ps. The Celtic Tiger refers to the period of the early 2000s before the recession in 08'
How do you feel about your PM making criticizing the open border policy as arrestable "hate speech"
@@Lightningdude We're fine because it feeds into the far right hooligan ideology. The protests were organized on Twitter and hate, racism and assaults on migrants have increased. We don't want American Republican ideology here. We don't want any of it.
The cultural enrichment will fix most of your problems.
@@pronabol “enrichment” because crime rate going up is more in line with an enriched society
Bullshit there isn't mass emigration from Ireland on average we have a net return of 10k irish citizens annually most people who do emmigrate go to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in pursuit of adventure which happen to be 3 of the only countries with higher costs of living than us
It's a nice introduction to transfer pricing. From there you can only start to see how deep the rabbit hole goes as you deeper into it.
Trying to find the actual value?
A practically bottomless labyrinth. Just today I found a story about Britain's richest woman, Denise Coates, owner/CEO of Bet365. One of her business moves was relocating the corporate seat to Gibraltar.
How can they claim they make key decisions in Bermuda when Tim Cook works in Silicon Valley and they print “designed by Apple in California” on every product
consumers pay all tax
It's amazing how easy it is for an army of lawyers to make a murderer not be guilty of murder.
Great question
Because this is just legalized financial crime. They don't actually want to enforce the rules.
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
I've always said that countries should tax the revenue generated by multinationals within their borders at the same effective rate as local businesses. Allowing loopholes like these to exist is deeply unfair.
That is already a thing in the EU: it’s called the value added tax.
Customer pays VAT not Apple
It's impossible to implement globally unfortunately
@@kristijangrgic9841 The burden of VAT is split between the customer and the seller. The customer pays higher prices, the seller gets lower profits. The exact split is determined by the price elasticity of demand. See the effect on tax incidence section of the Wikipedia article for “price elasticity of demand” for more info.
@@Aakkosti Ireland already has VAT. It doesn't stop them from being a tax-haven
"thousands left the country in search of greener pastures" lol
The grass is always greener unless you’re in Ireland.
@@Triquetra15Ireland is pretty green.
consumers pay all tax
@@fullmetaltheoristAnd grey too
@@Triquetra15imagine leaving Ireland for somewhere greener, that’s like leaving Antarctica to find more ice😂
I traveled to Ireland this summer. Unfortunately, I found the country disappointing. The wealth seems concentrated among a small group, leaving many to toil endlessly just to afford a modest 500 square foot apartment. It appears that in their pursuit of wealth, they may have sacrificed some of their cultural heritage and traditional way of life. It's a sobering reminder that financial prosperity doesn't always equate to cultural richness or character.
Capitalism! Ain't it grand?
Aw that's a shame, maybe the Irish should have stayed poor and continued to leave the country in droves so that when the tourists went there, they would see the romanticised vision of simple, backwards, rural Ireland they had in their heads.
@@UPalooza MY CHURCH. MY CHUUUUURCH, IT COLLAPSED, WHY GOD, WHYYYYYY
Ah I work in Ireland, under job description I will put "creating the illusion of legitimacy".
It's absolutely crazy to me that the minimum wage in Ireland is triple of my own country, yet the infrastructure and housing in my home country is 100x times better.
Its the product of 100 years of bad city planning and mismanaged government.
Ireland has a problem with nanny state management.
@Chris-zd7gw czechia
I live in Ireland and I feel that every European country is better and more modern than here. Portugal for exemple, is better in ANYTHING compared in Ireland, except the WAGES.
Minimum wages, and high ones at that, are actually not that great economies.
"We all want to do the most good."
Right after explaining how corporations, and the people running them, fleece billions in tax revenue from countries with people living in them.
Never change, UA-cam. Never change.
The Irish government can shut down the loopholes any time they want. But they won't. Because 2% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
@@MinecraftMasterNo1 It's the prisoner's dilemma. If all countries taxed corporations reasonably, then they'd all get a reasonable amount of tax revenue, but if one country is a tax haven and the other isn't, the corporations will go to the tax haven.
@@MrAwawe The other countries could put pressure on the one country to change. However, they won't do that if the people in power have something to gain.
consumers pay all tax
@@MrAwawe Yes, and what is reasonable? 35% or 2%? or maybe 0% because corporations and people are taxed in many other ways.
The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich, a true classic.
This is an incredible description of how tax havens work. Well done!
I agree, but even then I still feel like I don't really know how they work lol. A company can avoid taxes just by transferring money back and forth through subsidiary companies? This shit doesn't make any sense
The company sets up a comapany in a country like Ireland and then charges the main company for something like the name or logo or whatever so technically the company in the other country made no profit and therefore pays no taxes@@littlekirby6
@littlekirby6 your method I's too simple lol
@@littlekirby6 Because the video skipped a lot to save on time. First, this video only focused on corporate net income tax. (Apple pays many other taxes in Germany).
Companies can reduce net income by increasing expenses. One way to increase expenses (in the German entity) is to pay for the right to use the Apple logo. So Apple Germany pays Apple Ireland to use the logo.
If the logo costs exactly as much as the gross income. The net income is 0 and Apple Germany pays tax on that amount (0).
Ehm.. it's not? No sources in the description, he says "voila" at 08:38 without having explained anything how this works in detail and why this avoids the mentioned 20% tax on profits paid to tax havens, he seems to confuse the European Commission with the Court of Justice of the EU, et cetera. This video is full of mistakes, which on such an interesting yet nuanced topic is really annoying.
as someone whos lived in Ireland since 2011 this is very interesting, i was fully aware of most of why the GDP was "inflated" but i like the attention to detail in the video
Irelands GDP is not inflated. It is in line with exports and productivity.
@@Art-is-craft are u mentally insane? like seriously do some basic research anywhere.. it very much is "inflated" by certain corporations, ive talked to many irish people here its almost common knowledge.
The roundabout way you used the idea “something extraordinarily valuable” and “something difficult to value,” at the end. Well done friend
I'm Irish as Irish gets, a Connemara man to the core. I have one of the better paying jobs in my village, and I'm talking home €26,000 and some change at the end of the year. Even the CEO at my company has a salary below that per capita GDP, he makes a little under triple what I do. I would know, I work in accounts, I know what everyone I work with makes, none of us make over €80k PA.
Hardly representative
Wow that’s very little. In the United States very uneducated people make around that working at McDonalds per year.
In addition don’t have to deal with the terrible climate Ireland has….Rain and Grey cloudy skies over 300 days per year.
@@jasonknight5863You make a good point about the weather; it really is terrible here and I think I would gladly take a pay cut for some more sunshine because it's healthier and puts you in a better mood.
You get paid so little because you live in a village in Connemara. If you were in Dublin you'd be paid a lot more, because the cost of living would be a lot higher.
@@martinrea8548 agreed 👍🏼 I know I lived in County Galway for the first part of my life. I couldn’t deal with the super high taxes on everything that V.A.T at what 23 % is robbery. I never saw myself getting ahead in anything I did. And too much red tape from Government there in anything you did. Even getting a simple Driver’s Licence to pay 4,000 a year on a midget econo box 4 cylinder seemed ridiculous to me then. I’m so glad I got out of there in my early 20’s. 20 years ago. As the miserable grey weather combined with grey buildings never painted gave me depression. It’s not natural to get so little sunshine and Vitamin D. Now I live in Florida with Zero State income taxes, Palm trees 🌴 and beautiful women everywhere. Couldn’t be happier.
Yeah the lowest incomes at McDonalds or Burger King is what 18$ per hour. If you want to be a bar tender or server at restaurants you’ll make far more with tips on everything but a lower wage. But accommodation is expensive but you can rent a room at people’s houses at first. Only drawback I see. If you have a way to buy a house you’ll have it made here!
I wish you good luck with this winter….
Reminds me of Big property investors I use to work with. Buy shopping centres. Carry out rent reviews. Create huge revaluation reserves that they can't distribute to owners. So they drop the company into a new formation and voila Big early payouts
The lack of mention of the GNI-star metric by the Irish Central Statistics Office in this video is reprehensible.
The Irish authorities are well aware of this tendency, so the Irish CSO thought of the GNI-star to measure how the Irish economy is really doing. However, for official purposes, the bloated GNI and GDP are still used as these are computed in line with international standards and make for international comparison with other countries.
Exactly. It gives the impression that the author is cherry picking in order to make the Irish government look like the bad guys.
Also, the title stating that Ireland's economy is broken doesn't make sense. If Ireland pursued a more conventional economic model you'd be able to say that its economy isn't broken, but Irish people would be considerably less well off. It would only be broken if it didn't deliver significant advantages for Ireland which is not the case.
@@PaulColclough47 I'd argue it's definitely strange, but broken is debatable. The thumbnail doesn't help either.
@PaulColclough47 Are you even listening to what you watch? The benefits are given to a small minority of the population employed by the Tech companies, the rest of the population are not employed by the tech companies and do not get the investment in public services because the companies effectively pay no tax. If you're not employed in tech & working class, you're not winning from this.
@@AB-zl4nh@AB-zl4nh so this take just not true through at all. Not sure if you just dont know or are spreading misinformation.... There are a 165000 employed in tech multinationals directly and another loads in the pharmaceutical sector. We've only 5 million people so staying a couple of hundred thousand is a tiny minority is just wrong. The income tax paid by these workers is the states third largest tax take. There is also a huge amount of employment generated servicing these companies. In 2023 the state also took 23 billion in corporate tax revenue. Thats a huge payout. So ya again you are just wrong. The whole country benefits hugely from these companies and would be goosed without them.
@@AB-zl4nh
Investment in public services benefits everyone.
While everything should be scrutinized by the public, Ireland today lives much, much better than before, which migration charts clearly show. Many Croats go there to build wealth that is difficult to accumulate here in Croatia. My father was one of them and I can only thank Ireland (and primarily my father, of course) for the comfortable life I'm living.
I'm not from Ireland, but it seems to be fine country, it's just that it's economic success is highly inflated, but idk it doesn't seem poor. In fact peaceful, kinda modern and just very tranquil.
Yes people have to remember Ireland's history was just a constant drain of emigration. Young people would not stop leaving. The current economic success is inflated but Ireland is still doing so much better than before.
@@sonicthehedgehog513 Yep, it's actually amazing how Ireland managed to reverse the trend in such hasty and chaotic way and it actually worked. People don't give enough credit to that and there's still plenty of countries in Europe that completely failed at that or their success is much smaller and more timid. Ireland pulled the most based Uno reverse card in Europe by far. I know it's still a bit problematic country due to housing and healthcare, but as European I'm very proud of their unorthodox success.
This country is overrun with foreigners, yet our useless politicians lecture us about climate change.
Yeah but the native irish lost
The "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was mentioned years ago on Last Week Tonight, and it STILL sounds like a weird sex thing that should get you arrested.
Instead, it's a weird tax thing that should get you arrested (but doesn't, because all the users are companies with teams of million dollar lawyers)
@@overwrite_oversweet Also, because it dosnt exist anymore.
Don't knock it until you try it🤣
Legal between consenting adults
I once heard late lamented RTE's Gerry Ryan do a phone-in on Irish radio ... he'd been looking at the UK Red Tops and there was something in one of those rags about "3-in-a-bed sex". So he said that was the theme for that day's phone-in, and invited all the people of Ireland who'd had some experience of it to phone in. I listened to the whole programme in a country lane in the middle of Tipperary somewhere. Not a single person phoned in. At the end Gerry said "Ah yeah well, the thing is, the UK is always a couple of years ahead of us with things like that."
15:40 I heard the phrase "with outrage" as "without rage". Funny how a different pronunciation can lead to the precise opposite meaning.
consumers pay all tax
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
@@tjnakYour Mom pays my tax boy 🇸🇬🇸🇱🇸🇬🇹🇩
"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"
You know this is good when UA-cam is too frightened to recommend this.
The IMF and EU are planning to omit Irish GDP figures unless they use a suitable metric to evaluate GDP. They have a GDP per capita 3 times that of the UK, but average salaries are slightly lower than that of UK.
Isn't it the problem that there is only one way to calculate GDP and that gives rise to the anomalous number? To my knowledge the number is calculated correctly. If the CSO decided they had their own way of calculating GDP then that would be cooking the books and nobody would pay any heed to it. I understood that most authorities accepted that GDP in Ireland was so distorted by accountants moving things in spreadsheets that they switched to another number instead called Gross National Income (or something)? By the way Irish people make roughly $600 more per month on average than UK folks. $3910 Vs $3316 Techreport, Sept 2023
Ireland themselves published a modified GNI because their gross GDP figure is so skewed
That said I am not sure if the EU accepts modified GNI for calculation of their budget contribution because other countries might start submitting their own matrices instead of GDP
consumers pay all tax
Rubbish. As mentioned above Ireland has always put up GNI as the real indicator. Plus we are bound by EU law to contribute as par GDP.
Also our incomes are higher than the UK
11:56 how did the heightened activity of multinationals affect the housing market? Maybe it was a minor factor, but I feel like pointing to it as a reason for the crisis is seriously ignoring a real cause
Higher salaries in tech companies make higher rents.
Completely agree that multinationals aren’t the main cause (which is a painfully simple lack of supply). However, following the 2008 crash, the banks had to do a fire sale of their assets which were bought on the cheap by multinationals. The low tax rate was just the cherry on the cake which made these investments very appealing. It all served to boost the demand for housing, increasing the price and making it harder for people looking to buy homes, which increased the demand on the renter side too. As far as I see, the housing crisis would have happened anyway, but it wouldn’t be as bad if it weren’t for the multinationals being able to buy homes. This isn’t even to mention the dual economy point - since multinationals are usually paying larger salaries than Irish companies (not to all of their staff but some of them), this also increases demand and makes it even harder for lower earners to afford rent and mortgages. But as I said, the main problem is a painfully obvious lack of supply.
Majority of the pop centred in and around a tiny greater Dublin(and now spilling into Kikdare and Meath). Immigration boom. Plenty of cheap houses in the midlands or on the west coast. You can have a 3 bed family home in Leitrim for 150000 or less.
Open borders, a dysfunctional housing market, limited good housing, rent controls, housing standards to build very insulated houses that builders have decided no one can afford so they arnt being built. Its a lot of things.
It contributed to the problem through higher demand for housing by ‘expats’ and people moving to Ireland for the tech jobs. But Airbnb and the government allowing corporations to buy housing has had a much bigger impact. You are correct, Polymatter should have mentioned the bigger contributors in context or at least that there ARE bigger contributors. Otherwise it looks like a wild statement. All the politicians are landowners/landlords, so they are happy to see values increase. A bubble burst is coming.
I might have missed something but from around 6:45 to 8:30 I didn't understand why:
Transfering funds from Germany to Ireland to Bermuda would mean a 20% tax on the transfer to Bermuda
But transfering funds frum Germany, to Ireland, to the Netherlands, back to the OG in Ireland and only then Bermuda would mean a 0% tax.
Can someone clarify?
This confused me too.
I believe corporations will always try to avoid taxes. I am not proud that Ireland helps them to do it. But if the US system can't elect politicians who care enough to stop it, then other states will take advantage.
I'm Irish and live in Dublin. I am old enough to remember how poor Ireland was when I was young, compared to many northern European countries. This video is mostly truthful and correct, even though as a polemic the creator chooses to leave out certain facts that may not support its argument. It is absolutely true that we in Ireland benefit hugely from multi-national corporation taxes, and have an unhealthy dependence on that income. I do feel the statement that Ireland had to be pressured into the OECD agreement on a minimum taxation rate of 15% is wrong - the Irish government welcomed it as it hoped it would remove the stigma of Ireland being a tax haven. Has Ireland benefitted from corporations that use accountants to game the system globally so they can pay less tax overall? Absolutely yes.
The headline of this video is both right wrong. Even the Irish state doesn't pretend that the 26% GDP in one year mentioned in the video was real. In fact the Central Statistics Office of the Irish state developed a new metric called Modified Gross National Income to allow for the unrealistic impact of multinational corporations on GDI. As an Irish person and somebody who considers himself a social democrat, I am not proud of these practices, although, within the EU, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are accused of the same practices.
We can, for now, ignore the bit about Apple setting its own tax rates as zero evidence is presented in the video for the argument made, and a European court found it not to be true that they got special treatment (that may change upon a second appeal). But I can understand why in the late 1980s a poor country, with a colonial history of its manufacturing industry being suppressed by the UK, and a hugely backward and inefficient agricultural economy (largely of our own making by stupid, protectionist nationalist economic policy for most of our independent history), courted multinational corporations. It had, by international standards a well-educated, and largely unemployed young population. Offering low taxes was a way to get SOME income into the economy.
The video makes much of Apple coming into Ireland in 1980. But the European single market only became operative in 1993, and wasn't even a discussion back in 1980. Of course, once the single European market came into existence, the low Irish corporation tax became far more attractive. And that is how we got to this argument.
But, what always surprises me about videos and arguments like this one is that the USA, the source of the vast majority of Irelands', and any other alleged tax havens', tax income, has done nothing as a state to put a stop to this. The USA was for most of the last 75 years by far the strongest economy and political powerhouse in the world. If its elected representatives were truly outraged at US corporations denying US citizens of properly due taxes they have had ample opportunity to deal with it. But they have not. Why not? Could it be that US house members and senators depend far too much on corporate donations? The best democracy money can buy?
Most irish people already know this. On top of that most are not happy about it.
Despite our economy looking great on paper it is absolutely abysmal for your average resident. Normal people don't see any of these benefits and a vast majority live paycheque to paycheque.
ironically, apple doesnt even have an official store in Ireland
Too expensive to set up in Ireland. Ireland has an amazing corporate regulation structure that has the right amount of regulations to encourage businesses to flourish. But has a horribly over regulated local economy were the average small business pays about 50% tax and is a nightmare to get started in. At the end of a be businesses first year of trade they have to pay double taxes so that they pay the next years tax in advance. Average worker is subjected to nearly 50% tax.
@@Art-is-craftthe solution for ireland isnt *more* deregulation
I'm interested in investing, but I'm not sure where to start. Do you have any advice or contacts who can help me out?
Investing can be complex, so it's smart to get professional guidance when building your financial portfolio.
It's a great idea to have a conversation with financial advisors like Naomi Dean to reshape your portfolio.
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That woman is a genius
How can I reach her?
Now do Singapore; lots of billionaires with Singaporean citizenship, but nearly all made their fortunes elsewhere and are merely parking them away from their home countries' tax authorities.
It's cause Singapore doesn't have capital gains taxes
Seems like Singapore and Ireland have a lot in common.
@@Cococokieful Singapore is literally a tax haven too
@@James-un8iowhy isn't it treated as a tax heaven?
Yes.
Wow, reading the comments I feel sympathy for the folks living in Ireland in regard to housing after reading the comments.
We live less than an hour from San Francisco in the US, and our mortgage+tax+insurance on a 5 bedroom 3 bath house (built in the 70's, bought 14 years ago) in a small city is around $2000/mo. It's affordable on our modest retirement. Other parts of the SF Bay Area are crazy high prices, though.
I hope the new home building policies improve the situation for you. And I hope your government can learn to prioritize your existing population first, before bringing in more immigrants than you can afford to handle. If you fix things within Ireland first, then I would think that you would be more able to genuinely welcome immigrants as contributors who can be integrated to mutual benefit.
Also sad to hear about the health care issues there. We're pretty happy with our health care overall, now on Medicare (national health care for retired people) but contracted to private suppliers. In our state of California, everybody who needs it qualifies for government health care at no cost (or at lower cost if they have enough income, or at market rates if they have lots of income). Most of that is paid for by the national Medicaid program, except coverage to unauthorized immigrants which is paid from state taxes.
I would love to visit Ireland someday. And if I do, I promise not to mention my ancestry from there, as I understand it's not appreciated.
Working in Ireland after having lived in Italy several years. In three years I saved 6 times what I saved in 6 years of doing the same job in Italy. And all of that while paying a crazy high rent (that goes to irish landlords), and not giving up on small luxuries like pubs and restaurants, also run by Irish owners.
So not only I saved more, but I also gave back to the community more both directly and through my taxes.
I don't see a single reason why Ireland should change it's economical recipe
Bullshit
If you get a job working remotely you, you can do very well for yourself.
@@tommybreen9677 not everyone’s a failure!
I grew up in rural ireland on a farm and now I'm a software engineer on 135k, the rest of my siblings are earning in the high 80s and 90s. The fact that we've gone from somewhere people leave to somewhere where people actually emmigrate to is amazing. You can actually succeed here now rather than being forced to emmigrate for basic opportunities the rest of the world takes for granted.
That being said there's terrible affordability issues if you're not in tech, finance or pharma. If you are in those industries the country works for you.
Where are you from?
The big problem is, even though these companies don’t provide nearly as much benefit as the GDP would say they do (because GDP per Capita in Ireland is a nonsense figure) we can’t get rid of the companies because our economy is built around them. So we have a group of MNC’s that don’t provide much benefits but could destroy the economy if they left, these means the government basically has no leverage over them.
That sounds like a weird variant of "resource curse" to me. I hope the situation improves eventually.
Corporation tax is only part of Ireland’s tax base. Ireland is full of MNCs that manufacture real stuff making Ireland one of the biggest per capita manufacturing exporters in the world.
Anywhere in the world that big Tech moves in, they take over eventually. Its a double edged sword having them. They create lots of wealth very quickly, but none of it filters down to the actual people in Ireland. Now they Tech Billionaires own the politicians. They are just their stooges. Now they own the economy. Now they own the Irish nation. Give it a few more years. Irish people will be living in tents on the streets like Californians do. You sold your souls to the devil.
In the basement of every successful company lie buried accounting skeletons.
Book cooking 👍
@@armantanzairiand tim's cooking
How rich are Irish? They should also consider the mean income of workers in Ireland- Its far from Luxembourg, USA, UAE. The mean Irish income is close to France and Malta.
Ireland has a higher income level than Luxembourg. Ireland has one of the highest per capita wealth levels in Europe.
The Celtic Tiger was the name of a (singular) boom in the 80's, not the Irish economy as a whole.
Oh and the flow of migration hasn't reversed, matter of fact the Irish are still leaving en masse and most foreigners don't stay past two years for the same reasons, there's nowhere to live.
There are properties available but due to the poor infrastructure especially in transport and communication. Everything is Dublin centric and top heavy.
Irish are not leaving en masse, it's just factually untrue.
@@sonicthehedgehog513
We are IMPORTING en masse now.
Bullshit comment. The Celtic Tiger began in the mid 1990s and the foreigners have no intention of leaving.
Nobody claimed it was. Not even the Irish Government, nor the EU as they would be taxing us extremely heavily if they thought so too. We use modified GNI here, not GDP, we haven't since Apple dumped it's IP here. But we are as wealthy as Finland in total and per capita numbers and that's pretty good.
You should have spoken with an economist, economic journalist or anyone in government here and you would know that that number is used by the IMF and World Bank only and has no sway on policy or beliefs of grandeur nor a scandal. We have problems and are not Qatar. Switzerland is in a similar boat.
Also,, the sudden jumps were happening because we were about to increase our corporation tax rate from 12.5% to 15% for companies worth over 500 mil, so companies were bringing IP and cash reserves here before we increased the rates. No scandal, no secret accounting. How do tiny Island attract business? Low taxes. It's the same all over.
I've heard about the nightmare of US taxes for Americans working abroad, the IRS comes after you and you pay an accountant a lot of money to deal with it. Of course corporations can fill out a 3 page form and blow it off 🤦👺
The USA and Eritrea are the only countries on the planet that tax their citizens even if they live abroad. You can't escape Uncle Sam.
"Freedom" is a myth for Americans.@@serbkebab2763
"f course corporations can fill out a 3 page form and blow it off " I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, and you're making it up.
@@serbkebab2763 US taxes overall are pretty low compared to other countries. European income taxes are 2 times higher than the US and consumption taxes in Europe are 30% compared to around 8% in America
@@serbkebab2763
It is a great system that stops tax dodgers and ensures people cannot game the system.
"Economic mirage"... trust is a valuable asset.
Not the only Irish statistical anomaly! I remember when a non-profit similar to Givewell (but not, if memory serves, them) did a league table of a measure of 'good global citizenship' and Ireland came out top. I found this quite unbelievable, so I dug into the measure they had used. I found the critical statistic that swung it was low population growth. The plot thickened since I was sure Ireland's birth rate was anomalously high - when I checked I found it was actually by some distance the highest in the Western world! Then I noticed that the data set used was 2008 (even though by the time it was publicized we were well into the twenty-teens). The penny dropped: that year was the financial crisis and Ireland experienced an enormous emigration in that year, enough to entirely cancel out the births in the population count! Bizarrely, although the population growth figures and the birthrate figures were right next to each other in the data source (the CIA Factbook) the statisticians had chosen to use the population growth and not the birthrate in the measure of good global citizenship. Why adding to the global population burden is fine if you export all of that extra population to other countries was never explained, but I suspect they regarded population growth as a good enough proxy for birth rate, and it probably is for most times and places. Sadly though, not for Ireland in 2008!
Never really understood what "birth rate/population growth" has to do with "good global citizenship. We can support many billions of more people on this earth, and technological advances will allow us to support even more. Shit many countries like Japan are actually going down in population.
And we haven't even mentioned the solar system yet, one star system can support trillions and trillions of people on the low end.
While I'm not sure about the ethical arguments of using either population growth or population growth as a metric for "good global citizenship", this is certainly a good view into how when displacing statistics one must be clear about it, and well how easy I guess it can be to use statistics to support a view point!
We have been on an importing spree since then!
@@evanray8413 Yea, I did some actual research rather than relying on memory. I was thinking of "The Good Country Index". I did engage with them at the time about using population growth rather than birth rate and it seems they actually listened! Ireland has dropped to eighth position, still pretty good, but you are shooting yourselves in the foot with the Double Irish since many of the other measures are 'relative to the size of the economy'! For example, Ireland is 29th on culture, with Belgium 1st, which does not accord with my intuition! They are still not giving any credit for immigration or asylum 'imports' or any penalty for asylum 'exports' both of which seem to me to be important factors.
Emigration didn't truly take hold in Ireland until mid 2009 rising again in 2010.
April 2008 was more or less the beginning of the recession in Ireland. By the summer lots of construction work had halted. A stark rise in people going onto social welfare, shares in Anglo tanking etc. But as said the real flow of emigration hadn't yet began.
Well done on this incredibly insightful video. I'm a paddy myself and despite living outside of Dublin on 6 figure salary, funds are tight. High tax and very poor public service, i.e. public transport
The sustenance of the U.S. economy heavily relies on continuous credit and debt generation. It is anticipated that the Federal Reserve will augment the money supply, resulting in further accumulation of debt for the average American. Concurrently, foreign nations maintain a desire for the U.S. dollar, despite grappling with significant economic challenges, some of which surpass those faced by the U.S. This scenario prompts concerns regarding who will ultimately bear the consequences of these economic dynamics.
They do say gold will crash in a liquidity crunch However, many of those holding precious metals are preparing for such an event. So they are unlikely to be forced sellers. The paper market would tank and hopefully collapse.
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The average wage in Ireland has increased from 38k in 2000 to 53k 2022.
Unemployment in the 80's was 20% + causing mass immigration.
Today its below 5% despite the workforce increasing by over 200% including a significant number of Irish immigrants.
GDP is a sales number and not a wealth number. It has no representation of profit which is what creates wealth. Neither does it reflect distribution.
I hope it doesnt require a repeat of high unemployment to remind workers and their families what benefits these multinationals bring.
Did a google search
The median annual salary for men in Ireland currently sits at €45,537 compared to €37,782 for women. The national average in 2022 was €41,824
No idea where 53k came from.
We haven't jumped that high, + so many are employed but so little can actually live their life.
@roxie Statista who get their data from the CSO. Its why economist consider it a reliable source unlike google. Also you start with the median salary and then use average. Thats comparing apples and pears.
The same could (mutatis mutandis) be applied to Luxembourg, my native country. I like the reasoning with the interconnection between material and immaterial (“real and fake”) economies
@Person11068 .......Oi! Are saying Scotland is a dump? 🤨......how dare you compare us to the hell hole that is Dublin!
Appreciate the high quality effort you put into your work as always mate :)
consumers pay all tax
sadly not this time
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
It may not fully translate to wealth, but having visited in 1998 and then against in 2011, there was a vast, vast difference in noticeable wealth everywhere you go.
There is a difference and most people commenting do not understand GDP and wealth.
The Irish miracle is real, just not by standard GDP figures. Ireland was desperately poor, plagued by emigration and unemployment. It was Ireland's membership of EEC, then EU that dragged the country out of poverty. Before this Ireland was a broken down semi-detatched region of the UK economy.
If you doubt this compare the economic fates of Northern Ireland and the Republic. Before partition the Northern Ireland economy was 5 times the size of its southern neighbour and had half the population. Today that distinction is reversed. NI also depends on an annual €10Billion subvention, Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU. GDP may be unreliable but there are plenty of other measures. Foreign direct investment is real, hence Intel is building its most modern chip fab in Ireland. This is not just pushing paper around it is fixed assets invested in Ireland. Same with Pharma, you have to actually build product.
Calling it a "tax haven" like Cayman Islands or Bermuda really is just a meaningless slur. Such places allow super rich criminals to hide assets and wealth from states. That is just not possible in Ireland. No economically meaningful activity goes on in those places. If Ireland is a tax haven the so is Texas. Ireland is business friendly, to LEGAL businesses.
Before partition they were the same country, not neighbours.
12:18 Fun fact, well not so fun fact .
The horse prices here in Ireland are now higher than the peak of the “Celtic tiger” in 2007…which is also not too long before the recession hit. But yeah houses are silly expensive here and also doesn’t help that our government is saying we can take in more asylum seekers or refugees when for decades we’ve had a growing homelessness problem and haven’t had enough homes for our own population let alone the extra 100 thousand + people who have now come here ok top of that 😬
16:48 bulgaria (which is in the eu) has a corporate tax rate of 10%, and is missing from the graph.
+1. Rarely talked about, Bulgaria offers one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe, cheap labour force and affordable commercial and private real estate.
A couple of notes:
* Early in the video, there are a couple of points where you conflate GDP with wealth. By itself, GDP just means productivity. This is clearer later on in the video.
* Some good measures of whether Ireland's economic miracle is "real" or not would be to look at just the take-home pay of its residents, or the household consumption part of its GDP (theoretically, these should be equal). I can see the latter is only 34% of its GDP (compared to 68% in the US and 66% in the UK), which implies that take-home pay per capita is really only about US$ 35,000. (The same math for the US comes out to about $43,000.) Does that check out?
The mean take home pay in the uk is skewed by the City of London mean take home pay. Ireland's mean take home pay is about €2,000 more the uk without the City of London...
This is the absolute best explained video on Ireland's economy. After watching quite a few of them that basically all say the same thing and explain it very simplistically, this one has definitely shed light on the matter for me! Thank you!
No it is not accurate and plays on different issues.
They should really fix the GDP calculation. Like removing the oil prices from inflation numbers, but keeping the effect of oil prices on goods and services. Similarly if IP is not being used to create something useful, like the ones held by trolls, should be excluded. Is gambling included in GDP? Maybe it should be excluded as well.
Irelands GDP figures are fine and relatively accurate and maybe a little bit under represented due to the paranoid nature of over counting.
The fact that we call this a "tax strategy" not a crime or theft, is the reason why the world have so many poor people and why capitalism is failing for the poor (or working to keep them that way).
Absolutely. 100%.
Im Irish and I've just returned to Ireland from teaching in high school in Qatar and all I can say is... in 2 years I'm moving to Perth.
I'm hoping to retire next year at 55. My goal next year is to be more serious and consistent with my investments I've been investing since I was 22. 2024 is going to be more serous for me investing consistently for the long term. starting to save for a house down payment. I want to invest more than $105k, but I'm not sure on how to mitigate risk
Best thing you can do to derisk is diversify.
Its unclear which stocks and sectors will lead the market in the next uptrend. It is advisable to diversify while retaining 70-80% in secure investments. looking at your budget, you should consider financial advisory.
A good number of people discredit the effectiveness of financial advisors, but over the past 10years I've had a an advisor consistently restructure and diversify my portfolio/expenses and I've made over $3million in gains... might not be a lot but i find myself secure financially
Being heavily liquid, I'd rather not reinvent the wheel. Since this strategy works for you, how can I contact your advisor?
Samuel Peter Descovich is the analyst that helps me. He has a large following and is easily found online.
He has extensive understanding as I have made so much since following him.
Yes, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft are not the only companies or entities to take advantage of this tax stratagem (I don't want to call it a loophole, tax law either allows a certain activity or prohibits it). Guess who else does that?
That's right, the Rolling Stones. It was in a report on where the rights to their song catalog are being kept when I first heard about the "Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich" term. All the royalties for sixty years worth of Rolling Stones songs are taxed not in Britain but in Bermuda
. Conceivably, when they go on tour, the touring division pays the IP division that holds the rights to the songs for the privilege of being allowed to perform them, and all the millions of dollars generated by the concerts flows to the Bermudas, leaving nothing but a negative or break-even balance sheet.
So Jagger's stint at the London School of Economics wasn't a waster after all.
9:32 some guy crawling on the floor of the court trying not to get noticed 😂😂
As someone who is Irish born and bred, I can confirm that Ireland is a myth that doesn’t exist, I was from Australia from the beginning 😂
😢
@@bryanoconnor8573 Dublin is actually a suburb of Melbourne, right beside Geelong, sad times
I almost believed you for a moment but any sensible knows Australia doesn’t exist.
:D Birds are not real either :D
Bet you were really glad when you found that out, dodged a big one !
It's time to replace GDP with some other way of measuring a countries general economical status. Having mega corporations boosts the GDP of a country, but it doesn't impact the general population .
GDP is the only accurate figure.
@@Art-is-craft Too simplify the problem with GDP : One billionaire's wealth lifts the general income of a million poor people on paper .That's not an accurate representation.
@@spiritualanarchist8162
GDP is the only means of understanding a countries productivity. A billionaire worth has no bearing on productivity. It is the only means of generalisation in relation to a country. I think you are referring to living standards such as career worth, housing access, education and healthcare. Those issues in a high GDP society like Ireland are more about policy and how interested people are in the country. Some of the main problems Ireland faces are easily solved but will require public pressure rather than government activity.
@@Art-is-craft My mistake, I mean the Billionaire's income. And obviously the 'productivity 'of global mega companies and how this distorts the GDP per capita. nominal GDP is useful for comparing national economies on the international market. Not for the actual state of the country's population .
Just a few examples. Ireland . A fantastic GDP ,yet not reflected in the living standard of the general population.Why ? companies & tax schemes.
The Gold distribution via London is another beauty. A constant flow of Gold from outside Europe gets 'parked temporary ' before it's distributed to it's ultimate distentions . It's mere presence influences the GDP, while not having any real economic effect whatsoever.
I'm studying to become a teacher in Germany. For us, Klafki is the most important education theorist. He says, education has three levels: the elemtar, the foundation and the exmplatory. Everytime you have to teach all three. For example you need to teach about power in societies. Then the middle part would be some conflict like democracy vs authoritarianism. (in the 80s it would have been "communism"). Then you pick one example for you students, e.g. Ukraine's struggle for democracy.
The core never changes, the middle part changes very slowly and the examples are so plentyful, you can find another all the time.
But everything we do in school is always just an example and can be changed.
However, the exaples have to me relevant. Relevance comes in different forms: it can be a good example because it's important for the students either now or later in life or because it has some inherent or classical value.
I wish countries like the US and Australia had the guts to do more to stop money being moved to tax havens like Ireland, Singapore etc to avoid paying tax on it. Its unfair that the average person has to pay all this tax yet big companies like Chevron, Apple, News Corp, Santos, Facebook and others get away with not paying tax by using these tax havens.
Meanwhile it’s August 2024. Rents have spiralled totally out of control and house prices have nearly doubled in the past 5 years. The healthcare system is a complete mess with people dying on trolleys in hospital hallways (especially Limerick) and waiting lists of 2-3 years for critical treatments or surgery. Adult people, even couples, have to rent rooms in private homes in order to have a place to sleep. And that’s not even just in the big cities like Dublin or Galway or Cork. That’s everywhere!
I visited this year and it saddened me to see the disparity. All the "funny money" slushing about has created huge inequalities. A lot of the county land is just being bought up by the new rich (Irish) and just left vacant, turned into golf courses or gated estates. Yet in cities young people have nothing to do and can't afford basic life. A lot of young people want to leave. It's such a beautiful country with warm people, I wish thing were better.
The Irish Economic Model is High Paid Employment and High Value (both in Goods and Services) Exports lead. In the 60's, the Economic Strategy saw this as the way to make Ireland a success as Ireland was an Island far away from either the USA or Europe but between both. As Ireland had only one Natural Resource...... People.
The Government as heavily invested in Education and promoting Ireland with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, the CTR & Business friendly environment was part of promoting Ireland, to get high paying jobs into Ireland. Other than Pharma/Big Tech and other producers of High-value goods, there is Airplane Leasing, which was set up in Shannon in the 60's by GE Credit Corporation, the Irish Financial sector as grown by 25% since 2016 mostly in the Asset Management Sector.
Ireland receives a lot of tax from Companies, so for a Tax Haven Ireland isn't very good at it. Corporation tax receipts for 2022 €22.6 billion and it is estimated to be greater this 2023, total Irish tax revenue was €110 billion in 2022, The UK, for instance, in the 2021/2022 tax year, received £915 billion (€1,055 billion) in tax revenue but business rates only amounted to £22 billion (€25.5 billion).
8:37 can someone explain how is this different ? Apple Ireland 1 still need to transfer the profits to known tax heaven and therefore pay the 20% tax. How having two apples in Ireland bypass that ?
Layering as decided by a cabal of ghoulish lawyers.
It’s corporate magic that’s how
18:36 Actually the reason is as you mentioned earlier in the video. Such a significant portion of our annual budget is from corporate tax. 10 companies produce 60% of it and the top 3 companies produce 1/3rd of it. Without that money our annual budget would drop massively and plunge us into austerity. Raise the corporate tax rate, or go after Apple for the tax they don't pay, and they'll just leave for another cheaper tax haven, and we'll be left in the dust.
Im irish, so I'm probably biased, but I dont think "fake" is true. I have been employed by companies like Workday and Qualtrics. My friends have worked for Google, Amazon, Coinbase, Twitter and Meta, Datadog, etc, and I have friends and family working for some of the largest pharma companies in the world. These people range from software engineers, accountants, salespeople, lab technicians, etc. These are real jobs, adding value, consuming in the local economy, and paying taxes.
Really interesting video !
What could derail this cozy relationship is the Irish electorate. The consequences of growth ( high house prices and immigration) are the hottest political issues. Sinn Fein, a socialist party, has been growing in popularity for some time. Videos like this also help people understand the hidden wiring which underpin Irelands economic model.
Sinn Fein is a "faux socialist " party you will soon see how socialist they are if they get into government, it's not that they don't have party members with a strong social "istish" ethos and policies which say the same ...it's just that as EU members and with an "unreal" economy socialism isn't really a possibility, sadly they will find this out if they come to power , and will also come under great pressure to dismantle this cosy tax haven thing and also be under pressure to abandon the EU .,.....interesting times ahead ....all bubbles eventually burst ...
The Celtic tiger was a time period, not a nickname for the country, during a boom in the late 2000s during which everyone had way too much money
The transition into the promo for givewell was incredibly slick. Great video PM, thanks!
not really saw it coming a mile away
One thing not mentioned is the uk and USA would never let Ireland be invaded which is why they can stay so naively pacifist.
Patrick "Jason Statham of Macroeconomic" Boyle might be the only man on UA-cam to answer whether Ireland is real or not.
consumers pay all tax
@@tjnakwell it certainly ain't the guy in your profile pic who pays it
The tax incidence depends on the relative price elasticity of supply and demand. When supply is more elastic than demand, buyers bear most of the tax burden. When demand is more elastic than supply, producers bear most of the cost of the tax.@@tjnak
@@AitkenSteeleI think Epstein paid more tax than the guy in his image.
@@tjnak Yup, and consumers benefit from all tax, so it's a virtuous cycle. The important part is to ensure that corporations do not pocket more than they need.
I'm Irish, and would like to comment on the seeming conflict in interest between the Irish government and the Irish people. Those who have defended Apple's / Ireland's dealings in government are largely vilified by the younger generation. Enda Kenny, and to a greater extent, Bertie Ahern, in the eyes of the younger generations, are symbols of filth and gluttony and greed, defending their own interests. Many current Irish politicians also refuse to address the housing crisis, as a large proportion of them are landlords themselves, who profit massively from the inflated rent costs.
We dont oust these politicians because we have an aging population, with the majority of older demographics voting by loyalty and not by way of reason, leading to the same parties being voted in over and over. The older generation do not suffer the majority of the problems they created (most old people already own their home and do not work, so do not experience the housing crisis the same way), and so their minds can't be changed.
Thankfully though this is beginning to change, as the population churns. The upcoming election may be the first election where the next-biggest party (SInn Fein) has a shot at power, and that prospect is forcing the current parties to bow more and more to pressure.
This is old news. GNI* was introduced by the Irish Central Bank to correct these statistical anomalies.
"Modified gross national income (also Modified GNI or GNI*) is a metric used by the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) to measure the Irish economy rather than GNI or GDP. GNI* is GNI minus the depreciation on Intellectual Property, depreciation on leased aircraft and the net factor income of re-domiciled PLCs." Anyone still using GDP is only fooling themselves.
The Celtic tiger was a paper tiger and only the big US corporation made money from the tax loopholes in Ireland. The wealthiest persons in Ireland are corporate persons rather than human persons, meaning the wealth is not pumped back into the economy but held in banks on the island, which artificially inflates the wealth of the country. However these US corporations could leave the country and transfer their wealth to some place else which would completely rewrite the wealth status of the country.
bro is the master of waffling
@15:50 that's a clip of St. Arthur's square in Belfast, N. Ireland. No tax haven for them
Apple was the first foreign technology firm in Ireland in the 1980s? Must have missed IBM and Siemens... A lot of trust being placed in only one side of the argument.
Didn't Digital Equipment Corporation arrive in 1971? and I'm not sure they were the first major Tech Manufacturer. HP, Analog Devices, Wang, Intel? I knew people who joined Wang from the Marine Radio School in Limerick as there were no technological colleges yet to turn out technicians! That was earlier than the 80s!
I'm sure there were loads. Polymatter has just decided to take one side and presented this as fact. It's mostly a load of shite - but people have outsourced their critical thinking these days so I'm guessing much of will be taken at face value without further thought.
All those profits that aren't being taxed here are due to the US. They aren't due to Ireland or any other EU country. All the value comes from the US. It's just that the US is ran by corporations that it refuses to fix it's own issues. It's not even as if the money is sitting in bank accounts doing nothing in Ireland or real tax havens. Much of it has been invested in the form of US bonds and treasury securities. It's already sitting in the US system.
This is a poorly researched video unfortunately.
I loved the way he uses footage of Michael D Higgin when saying we were preasured, yet he had nothing to do with that. Our president is a figure head with little to no power
I wouldn't say it's an illusion. Corporate tax revenue was €25bn last year, that's real money and 5 to 10 times higher than comparable countries per capita. In addition, these multinational corporations employ 350,000 people in Ireland and invest billions on plant, machinery and services. That's real money too. I think it's fair to say Ireland is a very rich country, but not as rich as GDP implies as companies will move their profits home (mostly to the US). And no, it's not a tax haven. It's just a country with a lower rate of corporate tax and access to large markets like EU.
By far the best comment. You’ve achieved more clarity in 7 sentences than the UA-camr could in 20 minutes. Slainte.
Correct. Every country plays it's advantages, that is what is happening here. The "real versus fake" economic analysis presented here is a complete fabrication.
Agreed, great comment. Video is biased. Ireland's a great place.
and once again, i'm blindsided by just how good Polymatter is at sliding into sponsorships LOL
The average income in Ireland is still about 50k usd a year, while Switzerland with a similar but slightly lower gdp per capita, has an average income of over 90k usd a year.
Ya but look at Irelands improvements to economy, standard of living, employment rates etc etc. we were dead last in Europe in the 80s. We're now in the top quarter or near the very top for many measures. It's been an incredible performance
@@Dewaters65 that's not actually true though. We're behind in most areas and people are angry about it. Housing is unaffordable for most people. We're not tapping our renewable energy potential off the west coast. Our transport system is shit, e.g. no rail link to Dublin airport. Healthcare system chronically overburdened. Welfare sanctions ensure many people are excluded from society altogether, cue riots. Ireland is not at all the rosy land you're depicting. The establishment connives to keep any party who could actually change things out of power. Also, this tax haven stuff is embarrassing af.
But then average homes in Zurich are like $2 million, so 90k salary is not much there either.
@@unexpectedly1468 it is true though. By most global stats on standards of living, happiness, health, wealth we are near the top. Stop trying to make up things to fit your narrative. Transport here is middle of the road, not great not terrible. The metro would be nice.to be airport but it's not going.to improve people lived that much lol😂 yes we have a housing and health crisis but so does most developed economies so comparatively we're still doing very well. We extremely rich for a tiny nation with no natural resource to speak of.
@@unexpectedly1468 also stop being a gowl, who give af about the tax stuff, it's giving us a competitive advantage. If we didn't do it we still be like it was in the 70 and 80s, a total hole of a place that no one wanted to live in