IRELAND’S CORPORATE TAX take from US multinationals will become harder for Washington to ignore and may see attempts by the Trump administration and successors to curtail moves by companies to book their profits here, according to a former adviser to presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Describing Ireland’s ever-increasing corporate tax receipts as “tax gymnastics”, Brad Setser argued that Ireland is gaining this huge revenue from “what I think most people would say are really US source profits”.

These tax receipts, derived from the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly, currently make up 23% of total government revenue. The three companies combined paid over €16 billion in Irish tax payments in 2024.

Setser – who served in top trade roles in the Biden and Obama administrations – blamed the US tax code for creating incentives to offshore intellectual property profits among multinationals.

But over recent years, the scale of the corporate tax receipts “has got to be so big that it’s going to become, in my view, a little hard for the US to ignore” the money that could otherwise be ending up in Washington’s coffers.

“I do think it will become an issue just because the US cannot easily afford to give up this fresh tax return,” Setser said.

He added that he expects this to only intensify beyond Donald Trump’s second term in the White House as US politicians grapple with the country’s own finances.

Brad Setser is in New Ross this week for the Kennedy Summer School New York Times New York Times

Setser is currently a senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

He is speaking in New Ross, Co Wexford this week as part of the annual Kennedy Summer School.

The trade expert’s warning comes on foot of the latest concern expressed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) over the country’s reliance on risky corporate tax receipts.

Setser accepted that there have long been warnings about Ireland’s tax regime, but that it has taken on a “boy who cried wolf” footing due to the continuing of the practice.

However, he added that the question of taxation of US multinationals, and the amount of revenue that the US is losing to jurisdictions with lower tax rates, will become an issue during futures US debates around the country’s high deficit.

I mean, it’s quite obvious that Ireland is generating an amazing amount of tax revenue from being the home of several US multinationals. And that Ireland’s tax take is disproportionate with the actual substantive activity taking place in Ireland.

Setser said that Ireland is “the biggest player” in what he called the “offshore” tax system, alongside Switzerland and Singapore.

The Irish government has “insulated” itself from some criticism, Setser added, by entering a tax agreement in 2021 through the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

When this agreement was renewed earlier this year, the Irish Deparmtent of Finance said it hoped it would resolve US concerns with the global minimum tax rate.

“The US is losing significant tax revenue, that Ireland is gaining a lot of tax revenue from what I think most people would say are really US source profits,” Setser said.

Bottom line tho is that the US continues to lose tax revenue on its largest and most profitable companies to low tax jurisdictions like Ireland ....

the $6.5b paid to Ireland in 2025 would have been enough to buy a nuclear sub or two ...

4/4https://t.co/iD4f2vizqq

— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) July 29, 2026

Setser said that countries such as Ireland would have to “adjust their economic model” if the tax regime was changed, but pointed to an example shown by Google’s parent company Alphabet which revised how it pays tax earlier this decade.

The company returned its intellectual property to the US, but kept its ad sales business essentially in Ireland.

“So the US now gets the tax revenue, but Ireland still has a lot of the related tech and marketing jobs tied to the global ad business,” Setser said.

Setser will appear on panels at the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross this week, on Wednesday evening at the Brandon Hotel and again on Saturday morning at St Michael’s Theatre.