Research undertaken with Dr. Nessa Ní Chasaide

Financial Justice Ireland is pleased to announce a forthcoming collaborative research publication with Dr Nessa Ní Chasaide of Maynooth University.

Nessa, a former Director of Financial Justice Ireland, then the Debt and Development Coalition Ireland, brings extensive experience in campaigning, research and publication on Ireland’s corporate tax affairs and their place within the global economy.

With ongoing tax negotiations at the UN, shifts within the OECD, and significant legislative developments in the United States, this is a crucial moment for global tax reform. Nessa’s expertise will help us make sense of these developments and their substantial implications for Ireland and the wider world.

As Financial Justice Ireland continues to strengthen its research, education and campaigning work, we are delighted to continue collaborating with Nessa. Her research will make an important contribution to our organisation’s capacity to understand, navigate and respond to the complex challenges posed by the global financial and tax architecture.

Nessa's research paper is provisionally titled The long road to global tax reform: Ireland, the UN and the Global South

The abstract for the forthcoming work is as follows:

Global tax is undergoing an intensive period of reform, not seen for 100 years. New rules governing corporate taxation have been introduced that were unimaginable just a decade ago. States have agreed to share more information on the taxation of individuals and multi-national enterprises (MNEs). New anti-tax avoidance rules have been introduced. Most notably, a global minimum tax has been agreed to by countries around the world, and is being implemented relatively promptly by European Union countries.

Yet, despite these reforms, the problem of corporate tax avoidance by MNEs persists. A significant part of the problem is that the most fundamental reforms around profit allocation rules have not been implemented. In addition, the US, having kick-started the global reform process, is now refusing to participate on the same terms as everyone else. This effectively carves out US MNEs from the reforms. Ireland has benefitted significantly from real investment from US MNEs. Alongside these real benefits, Ireland has also participated in facilitating the reduction of the global tax bills of major US MNEs through, now infamous (and closed) corporate tax avoidance structures such as the ‘Double-Irish’.

New formations of avoidance practices continue, not least through the transfer of valuable intellectual property to Ireland by certain US MNEs. In this context, countries of the Global South have had enough of partial reform measures and have initiated a new political process by securing majority agreement at the UN to negotiate an unprecedented global Tax Convention.

This paper lays out the importance of the UN process and what is at stake for Global South states. It outlines the dilemmas that Ireland now faces and makes recommendations for a more coherent approach by Ireland to global corporate taxation, grounded in principles of tax justice.

Follow Nessa's work with FJI here: 

https://www.financialjustice.ie/learn/tax-justice-corporation-tax-in-ireland-internationally/

https://www.financialjustice.ie/learn/tax-justice-capacity-building-for-civil-society/