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The Briefcase: A Northern Ireland tax showdown, Nama plans and UTV everywhere
This was the week in business.
EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie takes a breather from the hubbub of the daily news cycle and looks back on all the important – and a few less-so-important – happenings from the world of business and finance.
So here’s what has been shaking up monetary circles through this working week:
Need to know
It’s rare that a politician really nails it in a speech on, well, anything. But we have to give credit where due to Finance Minister Michael Noonan, who this week played to the crowd at a corporate tax conference:
Tax is no longer a minority sport. We are now looking at a time when tax no longer is relegated to just the business pages, it is now front-page news where multinationals’ tax affairs are scrutinised and where each countries’ taxation regime is analysed in detail.”
Rarely have an elected official’s words proven so true in a week during which, in particular, the tax plans of the Republic’s northern cousins took up a lot of column inches.
After a few strong hints from the UK government early in the week, Chancellor George Osborne officially backed handing power to the Northern Ireland government to set its own corporate tax rate.
That would open the door for the assembly to undercut the UK’s blanket 21% corporate tax rate and go head-to-head for company business with Ireland and its renowned 12.5% regime.
Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said he wasn’t worried about the development, adding: “More power to them, we thrive on competition. We will compete and continue to compete hard.”
Meanwhile, at the conference, Noonan admitted Ireland had made some mistakes on its tax affairs in the past – pointing to the infamous Double Irish loophole, among other, domestic shortcomings.
But he also took a swipe at the EU’s fixation with the tax affairs of US multinationals, which he said often left Ireland “caught in the crossfire”. Take that pesky alleged sweetheart deal between the Republic and Apple, for instance.
Company accounts out from Facebook’s Irish subsidiary also revealed it paid only €2.3 million in corporate tax last year on a staggering €2.9 billion in revenue.
Still, on the whole it has been a good year for tax in Ireland, to paraphrase Noonan again. The latest Exchequer returns, out this week, showed its tax take was up €1.13 billion so far this year compared to what was predicted in the Budget.
Nice to know
- Nama took the wraps off its €150 million plan for the Boland’s Mill site in Dublin’s docklands. Most of the project from the bad bank (turned developer, apparently) will be in office space, although there will also be 42 apartments, retail space and restaurants. Elsewhere, US-based Hines said it would be the company’s top priority to deliver 3,800 homes on its site at Cherrywood on Dublin’s southern outskirts
- UTV Ireland will be on all the main platforms next year – despite the apparent best efforts of rival-to-be TV3, which reportedly tried to block the newcomer’s access to the free-to-air Saorview network. UTV will broadcast on Sky, UPC and Eircom, as well as Saorview, after its launch on 1 January
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Now you know
- Dunnes Stores staff moved a step closer to strike action after the company’s management said there was “no purpose” to filling the Labour Court’s request and meeting with workers over their ongoing dispute relating to pay and conditions
- Online payments company Stripe, set up by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, has been valued at about €2.8 billion, based on its latest fundraising round. It’s valuation has doubled since last January
- The European Central Bank is playing the waiting game before launching any more radical stimulus plans, even after dramatically downgrading its growth forecasts for the eurozone next year and in 2016
- Dublin institution Copper Face Jacks racked up an impressive €15,000 profit for every single day last year, or some €5.5 million for the year before tax. Or, to put it another way, that equated to about €211 in profit for every 20 minutes eager punters routinely spend in the queue outside the Jackson Court Hotel complex
One for the road
Back in the heady days of 2012, South Korea’s best-known galloping pop star, PSY, was a pretty big deal. Known in his home country for his absurd on-stage performances, he shot to stardom when his track, Gangnam Style, started going seriously bonkers around the world.
But a little-known fact about the song was that the clip featuring Psy’s now-trademark dance style forced YouTube to redraw its 32-bit system for counting views as it clocked 2 (and a bit) billion hits – numbers the site never expected to see.
Giddy-up.
Originally published 6 December
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