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Irish Tax Ad Instigator Identified

Posted on Apr. 23, 2019

The individual behind an anonymous Facebook ad campaign alerting users to the billions of dollars being saved by corporations moving to Ireland has revealed himself, and he has some choice words for the Irish government.

Paddy Cosgrave, founder of a major annual technology conference called Web Summit, has claimed responsibility for an “Irish Tax Agency” Facebook page, website, and related ads that he claims reached 1.4 million users. In an April 19 op-ed in The Irish Times, he said that it’s up to Ireland to “lead the transition away from low taxes or preferential taxes.”

Earlier this month, the Irish Tax Agency’s website said it was intended to educate Europeans about Irish tax structures like the loan-originating qualifying investor alternative investment fund (QIAIF); the website now identifies Cosgrave as its creator. Ireland helps corporations avoid billions of dollars in taxes and the loan-originating QIAIF enables investors to secure a zero rate of tax with brief set-up time and no filing requirement, according to the group.

Facebook has removed the Irish Tax Agency’s profile page. “We do not allow pages that are misleading or deceptive on Facebook, which is why we have removed the Irish Tax Agency page,” a Facebook spokesperson told Tax Notes April 22. But the group’s website is still up, as is a Wikipedia page about QIAIFs that the website links to. “Ireland is considered a major tax haven, and offshore financial center, with a range of base erosion and profit-shifting . . . tools,” according to the Wikipedia page. Irish QIAIFs have been used to avoid taxes and international regulations, it says.

But Cosgrave has wider complaints than just the loan-originating QIAIF structure, as detailed in his op-ed. Ireland’s power comes not from its size but its brand, and that brand is at risk, he said. “Ireland, according to some of the leading experts in the field, shifts more profits than any other tax haven on Earth,” he wrote.

Global perceptions of Ireland are suffering, “and that should matter for anyone concerned for the job security and economic prospects of people across Ireland over the next decade,” Cosgrave said. As a small country, Ireland can’t afford to ignore international opinion, he said. Ireland is in the spotlight and needs to acknowledge that its economic model of providing low tax rates to foreign corporations “has reached its sell-by date,” he added.

Both the group's website and Cosgrave’s op-ed highlight a U.N. special rapporteur’s March report of preferential tax laws in Ireland. An established critic of Irish media, Cosgrave pointed out that the day the U.N. report was published, The Irish Times ran more than a hundred unrelated stories, including one about deer overpopulation in Kerry. The Journal, an online publication, caught the report, however, he noted.

Cosgrave opened a €1,000 contest for the “best defense of indefensible tax loopholes by Irish media” to Twitter voters April 16. RTÉ led the vote at 38 percent, followed by The Irish Times, Irish Independent, and The Journal. Cosgrave has also promoted a February paper by researchers at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin on how the media influences public perceptions of corporate tax avoidance.

Cosgrave said in his op-ed that no one is convinced by the Irish government’s insistence that Ireland isn’t classified as a tax haven by the OECD. “Continuing to reassure the people of Ireland that everything is fine is naïve,” he said.

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