Economic Incompetence by Jessica McGrann

Imagine the DUP did a deal with Apple, to allow it keep 6000 employees in Ballymena.

Corporation tax is at 12.5% but they allowed Apple to incorporate 2 companies in Northern Ireland without having to specify an address and allowing them not to declare any activities not involving physical involvement in Northern Ireland. Not too difficult when there is no address and no employees here.

No other company here is allowed to incorporate a business this way, and for everyone else, all business sales MUST be declared by annual return whether they take place here or anywhere.

Now let’s imagine that this company is the largest on the planet and tens of billions of pounds in sales are going through these businesses.

Happy days you would think, but then you find that out of 24 billion in sales in 2014, only around 10 million tax was paid.  And this is happening every year, 2011 was 16 billion and again less than 10 million paid in tax.

Under international law, imagine we were entitled to this money but for some reason the DUP refused to take it.

We would all be ok about it I imagine, just pat Arlene on the back and say well done for keeping those jobs in Ballymena and for doing such a good job on the economy.

Obviously the countries where the sales actually took place that assumed tax had been paid in Ireland have pricked up their ears and have all piled onto the bandwagon to start claiming their share.

Italy has already had a pay-out since this was identified of over 300 million from Apple.

Over 186 billion is sitting in offshore accounts untaxed which Apple will have to pay tax on.

The bulk will go to the US and into R&D but a substantial amount will have to be paid in tax.

Other countries in the EU are queuing up to get a cut, but imagine the DUP said, no we don’t want any of it and as yet still haven’t bothered even though the money is in escrow to be paid into the EU and will be paid into the EU if Apple want to do business there.

Now as if that was not bad enough, imagine on top, we find that we had also been declaring capital assets moved here by this company as part of GDP.

It helped end austerity measures imposed and allowed increased borrowing up to 3% based on artificial earnings to ease austerity.

Sounds sneaky and canny way of improving the economy eh, except imagine now we have public sector demanding pay increases off the back of this false economy and the EU are about to stick hundreds of millions onto the annual EU contributions based on these artificial earnings.

So we are refusing to take tax money we are owed and as a result it will cost our economy hundreds of millions of pounds annually in additional EU payments which we can’t afford and would not have been expected to pay otherwise.

Now imagine it wasn’t the DUP but Fine Gael and Fianna Fail responsible for this mess.

How come the DUP are being scrutinised for much smaller losses than these other parties I hear you cry..

Well, I guess the biggest difference has to have been Nolan and the BBC so I guess they have Michael Lowry to thank for getting away with just about everything in the Irish medias eyes.

Who says crime doesn’t pay.