Mmmm, chocolate. Which for most of us probably means Mmmm, Cadbury’s. The Cadburys were a prominent Quaker family and their Quaker principles extended into the workplace when John Cadbury started the chocolate factory in the mid-nineteenth century. The company was the first to introduce a half-day on Saturday for its workers. Employees were encouraged to attend night school and got time off to do so. Cadburys were the first to give workers properly heated dressing rooms, kitchens for heating food, gardens, sports fields, swimming pools, a bowling green.
How things change. Last year, Cadbury in Britain paid no corporation tax, even though it made more than £2 billion in revenue and nearly £100 million in profits.
As far as I know, Steve Jobs wasn’t a Quaker, and Apple have even had allegations of sweat shops in the Far East linked to their products. But we don’t need to go abroad to see how they operate. In the south of Ireland, Apple has paid as little as 2% on profits made by its subsidiaries. In the US, their rate would have been 35% and in the south of Ireland the rate is supposed to be 12.5%. Last June, the EU started an investigation to see if Apple’s 1991 tax deal with Ireland broke EU laws regarding state aid to companies. If Apple are found at fault, it’s believed almost certain that the Irish government would appeal the decision. Which gives you the absurd case of a state getting ready for legal action so it can take LESS tax from a big international company.
Apple’s not alone in the cead mile failte it gets from the Dublin government. Companies like Google and Microsoft are doin’ all right as well. Last year Facebook paid £4,300 in tax. So the guy emptying your wheelie bin is paying more in tax than Facebook.
Pressured by the US and the EU, the word is now that Ireland’s going to abolish its Double Irish law which allowed companies to be registered in Ireland but not resident for tax purposes. However, there’ll be a nice big transition phase until 2020 for established companies. Oh, and the Irish government has announced it’s developing a ‘knowledge development box’ that’ll give firms tax breaks for intellectual property. Britain, Holland and other countries are hurrying to do likewise, but Michael Noonan, the south’s Finance minister, has boasted the Irish version will be ‘the best in class’.
Translation: Yerrah lads, don’t fret your heads – we’ll see ye’re not robbed with tax spalpeens knockin’ at yer door. Sur it’ll all be grand, grand.
What John Cadbury was to his Bourneville workers in the nineteenth century, Michael Noonan will be to multinational companies in the twenty-first. And then some.
it announced it is developing a “knowledge development box” that would provide tax breaks for revenue derived from intellectual property. Britain, the Netherlands, and others have introduced similar “patent boxes,” which allow companies to apply for a lower tax rate on profits that result from patents, but Ireland’s finance minister indicated the Irish version would be “the best in class.”
n June, the European Commission launched a probe to see whether Apple’s (AAPL, Tech30) 1991tax deal with Ireland violated European Union laws prohibiting state aid to companies. Ireland and Apple say they work in accordance with the law.
Apple has paid as little as 2% on profits attributed to its subsidiaries in Ireland, well below the 35% top rate in the United States and even well below Ireland’s 12.5% rate.
Why wouldn’t transnational corporations favour the Emerald Isle given sterling performances from the gombeen men featured in RTÉ Investigates 7 December 2015. The revelations in the documentary will come as no surprise, however, they do give rise to the question, how independent is an independent?
The first time the words, Emerald Isle ever appeared in print in reference to Ireland was in a poem with the title, “When Erin First Rose.” written by William Drennan. Born in Belfast in 1754, he was a poet, a physician and a political radical who helped found the Society of the United Irishmen. What would Dr Drennan make of the role of transnational corporations in 2015?
What might he say about the free market? What would he make of pejorative references to a bloated public sector? Would he concur with the wealth generating potential of the private sector while the Titanic Centre is kept afloat with publics funds with millions more to be spent refurbishing a naval rust bucket courtesy of the taxpayer? Do we need a floating museum? Surely our priorities should be proper working terms and conditions of employment, high quality public services, flood defences, road maintenance and street lighting? Transnational corporations have a different set of priorities geared to concentrating wealth and with no interest in sharing wealth.
The recent floods have caused chaos and destruction. People were left temporarily without electricity, homes and various retail outlets. This is a permanent reality for many in the Middle East. The rain will stop falling here, would we could say the same about bombs falling far from the Emerald Isle.
Steve Jobs wasn’t a Quaker, Esteemed Blogmeister, though he might well have been a quaker.
While his biological father was a (gasp) Muslim born in Homs, Syria and his biological mother, a (gulp) Catholic born on a farm in Wisconsin his adoptive Californian parents had a mixed background of Calvinism and Armenian Apostolic.
Steve Jobs’s legendary ability, however, to make his underlings quake would have qualified him as a quaker. Indeed, such was his ability to make the groundlings quake in their boots (whether on the ground or not) suggests he might well have had blood relatives further east than the Middle East. The singular Oddjob comes to mind.
The Korean-born Oddjob was, of course, Goldfinger’s hitman of choice. And his ability to fling his razor-edged bowler hat with deadly accuracy would have made him a natural for the War Office of Westminster.
It is unlikely that Steve Jobs numbered a bowler-hat, even a razor-edged one, among his hat-list of choice in his own personal haberdashery. But if he did it is, erm, odds on he would have used it to devastating effect to slice the prevailing rate of corporate tax down to minimalist proportions.
When it came to tax, SJ was almost Jesuitical in his approach: less is more.
The history of Smartphones begins with Steve Jobs and there is no smarter phoney (in the sense of a phone friendly person) in Free Southern Stateen Politics than Michael Noonan, TD, Min of Fin. The avuncular one whose vocabulary is dotted / dot.commed with the j-word: jobs. Though once it has been through the Limerick word-wringer it comes out as: jabs.
As in: ‘jabs, mill-uns of jabs’.
Which is as it should be, given High Noon Noonan is as formidable a dueller as ever stood in the Haydleyville of Huckster Politics. And his ‘knowledge development box’ could well be the very dodge, oops, plan to hold on to the Apple of his eye. For every schoolteacher has his own pet project.
Or, as former Headmaster Noonan so aptly put it: ‘it will turn out to be the best in the class’.
And the beauty of it all its that it would not involve moving outside the county boundaries of the Min of Fin’s beloved Limerick. The first step would be to relocate the HQ of Apple to its spiritual home of,erm, Oola, County Limerick.
Oola is a delightfully deserted village which nestles under the shadow of the Silvemines Mountains which are infrequently touched by the (gulp) goldfingers of fleeting sunshine.
During the Lloyd George bother back in 1920 it achieved a limited, local notoriety when a British boot on the ground (call him Ben) said to his brother in arms, as they entered the outer suburbs of the then sleepy village of Oola:
-Say, Len, wot the flamin’ ‘ell is this about, then: ‘a big O, followed by a small o, followed by a l and an a’.
Well, while the day of Squaddie Ben and Len may well have sadly passed, the last two syllables of the village ‘la’ might well (in a matter of speaking) arrived for Apple !
Oola, as Gregory of the Crooked Mouth is given to chanting, is the leprechaun for (sigh) APPLES. Yes, the plural of the fruit, same as in Jobs. So, the APPLE would be more than happy to relocate there, location being immaterial in this digital age, as Goldfinger might have opined.
There in Oola / Apples where every last Quiet Man is an integral part of the silent majority in the local boneyard. Meaning, APPLE: squillions; Local Opposition: nillions.
And as for the second step, this is where the ‘intellectual property’ dodge would come into play. And what one suspects was the kicker for former English teacher, Master Noonan: play the leprechaun card.
-The Yanks, don’t’ you know, are just suckers for the good wee folk trooping all together, in green jacket, red cap and white owl’s feather.
In other words, as part of this intellectual property tax trade off thingy, and to get the Steve jabs to say rather than to leave, leaving us poor Paddies to grieve, get Apple to furnish each and every school in the FSS with the gizmos needed for a language lab (specifically a leprechaun language lab). It is understood they have intellectual warehouses stuffed with suchlike unsold property in Silicon Valley.
This way schoolchildren of the FSS could be fluent in the leprechaun in jig, even in reel and hornpipe, time. For as Toyboy Tubridy showed recently on his telly show, kids like nothing better than gizmos, gadgets and gimmicks.
And more to the point, mucho MORE to the point, and as the English-language supremacists, never desist from reminding the commonality, by outsourcing leprechaun this would free up millions, billions, trillions of golly gosh and turn West Britannia into a modern, Euro-friendly economy.
Eh? What’s that, Min of Fin Michael?
-Squill-uns. It would free up squill-uns of squids.
Taimid fos san FSS ar thoir whore an oir ag bun an bhogha baisti / Well, sillier cons than this one proposed for the proposed Valley of Silicon neath the brow of Slievenamon, have been gotten away with.
PS: Cadbury’s? Could this corporate entity be in any way related to the war-cry of the hawkers outside Croke Park on big match day: ‘Get the last of the ripe William pears and the bars of Car-berry’s choc a lot !’ ?
If so, mine’s a Caramel Nibbles.
Let the tax fall where it will.
‘jabs, mill-uns of jabs’ – LOVE it, Perkin!