Large Majority Supports Maintaining 12.5% ​​Corporate Tax Rate, Poll Finds

A large majority of voters think the government should keep Ireland’s corporate tax rate at 12.5%, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll.

The poll comes as the government is expected to announce on Thursday that it will join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreement to raise the tax rate for large multinational companies to 15%, after months of wrangling. to get changes. to the global agreement.

Respondents to the poll, which was conducted over the weekend and earlier this week, were asked which of the two statements came closest to their view of what the government should be doing on income tax. companies. The first statement, “The government should maintain the 12.5% ​​corporate tax rate in Ireland even if other countries want to harmonize the rate at 15%”, saw 59% of respondents say they were Okay.

The second statement, “The government should join international efforts to harmonize corporate tax at 15% even though this may result in lower corporate tax revenue”, was only endorsed by 26 % of respondents.

The remaining 15% said they didn’t know or had no opinion.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is expected to ask his Cabinet colleagues to allow Ireland to sign the OECD deal, which would mean an end to Ireland’s 12.5% ​​tax rate and its replacement by a rate of 15%.

Taoiseach Michael Martin gave strong indications on Wednesday that Ireland would sign the agreement.

He said he did not want to pre-empt the Cabinet decision, but that changes to the text of the agreement had improved the situation as far as Ireland was concerned.

“We were very anxious and had reservations when consensus was agreed some time ago. We indicated that we felt the language, particularly around ‘at least’, was not acceptable to us” , he said after a meeting of EU leaders in Slovenia.

Hungarian position

“This language has been removed. This significantly improves the situation from our point of view. Its application also applies to a small number of companies that exceed a significant turnover and value threshold. Thus, the vast majority of companies will not be impacted.

On Wednesday, there were signs that Hungary, which has a 9% corporate tax rate and is one of the last EU countries to oppose the OECD deal, was preparing to give up. his objections.

Budapest is “ready to compromise if we can agree on regulations that do not harm the Hungarian economy and do not endanger Hungarian jobs,” Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó wrote on Facebook.