yeah we’re all in it together alright …http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/index.html#1224328377985
every time I see ‘new jobs’ being announced by a foreign multinational here I wonder just what taxpayer subsidies, write-offs and waivers they have been given …many multinationals get to pay NO tax for the first several years here PLUS having us, the taxpayer, build the factory & the estate it is in. Apparently R&D is the latest tax avoidance wheeze …if the activities can be labelled R&D (and I’m unsure as to how rigorous any checks on the accuracy of the designation are) then the company gets very generous write-offs against tax liabilities. I know of one multinational big pharma company which informed its workforce that they would be ‘invited’ to resign their posts & reapply for ‘new’ posts and contracts in order that the ‘new’ jobs could be classified as being R&D. Needless to say acceptance of the ‘invitations’ was compulsory and the ‘new’contracts were ‘less advantageous’ than the old ones. Faced with either compulsory redundancy most employees accepted the ‘new’ posts i.e. doing their old jobs but at worse rates & having lost valuable time of service. Yet the company was then able to avail of tax benefits. …then we get our politicians spouting populist anti-EU stuff like this
whilst doing nothing to address this cash cow for the already mega-wealthy corporate entities.
rantindave 