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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

What makes you think they aren't? The Double-Irish-Dutch-Sandwich in particular was cracked down on.

To be replaced by the Irish tax department making direct deals that are essentially the same. But ONLY for specific companies (principle: big multinationals don't pay tax at all, local companies get big tax raises. Irish companies are dying, multinationals are moving to Ireland)

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ireland/corporate/tax-credits-a...

In case anyone wonders: this means the FANG companies don't pay tax in Ireland if they hire enough people in Ireland, which has famously high income tax. It is, in other words, effectively a massive tax increase on the employees while actually reducing total tax income in the EU compared to the "double dutch sandwich".

Note that Ireland signed at least 2 international treaties that they weren't going to do this (OECD minimum tax treaty, EU tax treaty). Of course, there are no consequences to this.

The response to is that EU is exploring company-tax-per-transaction which is so incredibly bad in the massive administrative burden it will generate. It's not final, but it will mean that for every transaction done companies will have to keep (PER transaction) pieces (plural) of evidence for what country they happened in. Every single transaction.

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/projects-and-acti...

Lots of governments give tax exemptions to selected industries (film comes to mind) or even companies (Foxconn/TSMC); I don’t support this behavior, but I don’t see what makes Ireland special in this regard.

Well, that was the original question of the thread:

> How come tax loopholes aren't as scrutinized?

And the answer is simple: because countries sabotage each other's tax income when they can, even within unions (like US or EU, hell I'm told it even exists in Russia).

And with mobile capital, like multinationals, they can.

Ireland violated international treaties, multiple, to do this. Oh and they call it a huge success (despite that this will obviously suddenly crash and burn when other countries either block it or give better deals).

Oh and it cements the power of American multinationals over local EU companies, when the Irish government publicly and loudly claims they intend the opposite, and for reasons I don't understand, people seem to actually believe them.

Just the fact that it takes NGOs and journalists to uncover tax evasion practices. The governments and tax offices aren't looking. CumEx was a scandal in 2017, and despite being known since 1992, has only recently led to just a handful of prosecutions.

Cumex was not a tax loophole it was straight up fraud .

So imagine the enthusiasm of chasing "legal" practices.

And CumEx is still being gleefully practiced by some in the upper echelons with smaller values. Literally no-one cares if you're rich and connected, apparently.

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