How Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits

 

Big multinational firms have found this damp corner of Europe a good place to book profits made from their globe-spanning operations. 

Tech giants like Apple or Microsoft transfer intellectual-property rights—some of the most valuable in the world—to Irish subsidiaries, which use them to collect royalties from higher-tax jurisdictions beyond both Ireland and America. 

Pharma groups use a similar trick

Through a web of royalties and licensing fees, accountants as versed in the arts of surreal creativity as James Joyce can magic away profits to Ireland, which taxes them at just 12.5% a year, one of the world’s lowest rates.

The Economist 12 June 2025

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/06/12/how-ireland-became-the-saudi-arabia-of-siphoned-off-global-profits

Pfizer in 2019 sold $20 billion of drugs in the U.S. Its federal tax bill? Zero

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/04/pfizer-in-2019-sold-20-billion-of-drugs.html

Almost 20 per cent of banks’ cross-border dollar funding is now supplied by entities based in the Cayman Islands

Gillian Tett 10 October 2019

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-sunny-place-for-shady-online-business.html

The Cayman Islands is a self-governing British Overseas Territory

England took formal control of the Cayman Islands, along with Jamaica, as a result of the Treaty of Madrid of 1670.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands