Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Saturday

Irish Government’s very foolish tax letter to US senators in Washington

   

The Irish Government’s decision to send a letter to two veteran US senators disputing a report by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, on Apple’s use of three Irish companies for tax avoidance, was a foolish one and on Friday there was a swift smack down from Washington DC.

Irish ministers were not the only ones who believed that the May 20 report of the Senate panel could be countered by arguments based on semantics.

“The charges made now need to be countered, speedily and effectively, by both political and diplomatic means. First, by Government setting out a clear narrative on corporate tax that can be easily understood – - at home and abroad – - and that rebuts some of the erroneous claims made. Second, through a major diplomatic initiative in the US to ensure there is a better understanding of the Irish position on corporate taxation.”

The era of the strong Irish presence on Capitol Hill with Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill as speaker of Congress together with leading senators, Edward Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had formed the ‘Friends of Ireland’ group in Congress in 1981, is past.

On Wednesday, Michael Collins, the Irish ambassador,wrote [pdf] to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the subcommittee, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, 2008 presidential candidate and ranking minority member of the subcommittee, claiming Ireland was not a tax haven because it did not meet four key criteria to be a tax haven as identified by the OECD – - the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think-tank for 34 mainly developed countries.

The letter also implied that Ireland had no responsibility for billions in transactions that were routed through three Irish companies because the companies were considered non-resident for tax purposes.

None of the 34 member countries have been termed tax havens as they regard the term an abusive one better suited for islands in sunny climes where arching palms sway over sandy beaches.

However, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg, do engage in tax haven activities and the protestations of Irish ministers and Joanne Richardson, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, evoke the Queen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Richardson said in an op-ed in The Irish Times this week that Ireland is not and has never been a tax haven and she found it regrettable, and unfair, that Ireland was name-checked so heavily in recent US Senate hearings. She added a delusional claim: “We can stand firm in the knowledge that our tax regime is internationally recognised as fair and just.”

The Senate subcommittee had found that Apple used subsidiaries in Ireland to funnel about$74bn in worldwide income away from the US. The three Irish subsidiaries — Apple Sales International, Apple Operations Europe and Apple Operations International — were incorporated in Ireland but not tax resident anywhere.

Apple was able to pay an effective tax rate of 2% or less since 2003, compared with Ireland’s corporate tax rate of 12.5%.

On Friday, Senator Carl Levin and Senator John McCain, responded to the Irish letter by saying:

“Most reasonable people would agree that negotiating special tax arrangements that allow companies to pay little or no income tax meets a common-sense definition of a tax haven.”

It was foolish for the Irish Government to send the letter as it was likely to be rebuffed by Levin in particular, a 34-year veteran of the Senate with a record of fighting tax and corporate abuses.

The playing with words by Apple and Irish ministers: [tax haven, transparent, gimmicks] in the face of pretty stunning evidence, has been zapped by a simple term: “common sense definition.”

Senators Levin and McCain are both pushing for US tax reform and that is the purpose of their subcommittee’s investigations.

The senators say that the average US corporation pays an effective tax rate of 15%, less than half the statutory rate of 35%. “A recent study found that 30 of the largest US multinationals, with more than $160bn in profits, paid nothing in federal income taxes over a recent three year period.”

With revelations of amounts involving huge sums of money, with most of it untaxed, the distinction between Irish tax-resident and Irish non-tax resident companies, would unsurprisingly be seen beyond vested interests and the delusional, as another example of the Byzantine schemes that are used to shelter from taxes.

It would hardly be a shock to know that most Irish non-tax resident companies are used for tax avoidance.

Phil Hogan says pay the water charge or lose your supply

     

People who don’t pay the water charge could face disconnection, Phil Hogan, the environment minister, indicated yesterday.

He said the new water bills should be treated just like any other utility bill.

“Anyone that does not pay a utility bill will have to face the same regime that you have for electricity and gas at the moment,” he said.  “People do actually want to make a contribution to our economic recovery. They know that water is a very expensive and an finite resource. And €1bn in their taxes is already spent to treat water.

It’s not free, no matter what way they think.”  He made his comments as Irish Water confirmed it has appointed Cork-based business outsourcing specialists, Abtran, to operate its customer contact call centre, creating some 400 jobs.

The minister said a further 1,600 jobs will be created through the national water metering programme.  Abtran, which employs 1,100 people at its facility in Bishopstown, has won a five-year contract to operate the call centre to provide customer care to about 1.6m domestic and commercial public water users.

It will begin operations next month with about 100 people supporting the start of Irish Water’s national metering programme, and the development of a customer database ahead of the start of domestic billing.  By the middle of next year, a further 300 people will be employed in customer service roles, management positions, HR, and project management, with salaries starting from €20,000.

Abtran was embroiled in controversy two weeks ago when an employee was suspended over alleged attempts to fraudulently use the credit card details of householders calling about the local property tax.  Abtran CEO Michael Fitzgerald said they dealt with that isolated issue very quickly.

Winning the prestigious Irish Water contract — which involved beating competition from several international competitors — is a major endorsement of Abtran’s people and capabilities, he said.  The Government was due to introduce water charges on Jan 1, 2014, under the terms of the memorandum of understanding with the troika.  But it has indicated that it would like to defer the introduction of the charge for at least a year.

Mr Hogan said a decision on the exact date for the introduction of the charge will be made after talks with the troika conclude in a matter of weeks.  A decision on how much people will have to pay is also expected in a matter of weeks, following a detailed analysis by the regulator.  Dr John Tierney, the managing director of Irish Water, said the company is at a sensitive stage in contract negotiations for the delivery and installation of some 1m water meters.

He said contracts will be decided by Jul 11.  And he said he is confident that people will pay the charge.  “Rather than starting from a premise that people are not going pay, I think we should be starting from the premise that there is a substantial majority of people out there who will pay, and we need to build on that,” he said.

Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy welcomed the new jobs.  “Abtran is already a significant employer in the Cork region and the creation of an additional 400 jobs will undoubtedly have a substantial and welcome impact on local employment and result in wider positive gains for the local economy,” he said.

Trainee Sikh Garda recruit fails in turban wearing legal bid

    

A SIKH has failed in a legal challenge to a refusal to allow him wear a turban after completing his training for the Garda Reserve.

Ravinder Singh Oberoi was told he would have to wear a garda hat with his uniform and not be allowed to wear a turban.

He claimed in a High Court challenge against the Garda Commissioner that as a result he was unable to continue his training and become a member of the reserve.

The Garda Commissioner argued that the Equality Acts do not apply to members of the Garda Reserve as they are not “employees” within the meaning of the Acts and are volunteers without contracts of employment.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Kevin Feeney agreed a member of the reserve is not an employee.

Under law, members of the Garda Reserve were volunteers and did not have a contract of employment.

Computer training to be provided to 1,000 secondary Irish teachers under a new initiative

   

Joint Google and Trinity initiative to provide over 1,000 mini-computers to Irish secondary schools.
A partnership between Google and Trinity College Dublin, which will see 1,000 secondary level teachers trained in computer science and more than 1,000 miniature computers provided to schools, has been welcomed by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn.

A total of €1.5 million will be made available for educational interventions, including certified training for 1,000 teachers in computer science through the Trinity Access 21 network and the provision of 1,000 Raspberry Pis, a low-cost basic computer that helps users develop coding skills. The project will also see targeted efforts to improve computer science and Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) capacity in Deis schools, while a national coding competition will also be launched.

‘Upskilling’
Speaking yesterday Mr Quinn said that “critically, [the initiative] is focusing on upskilling existing teachers in the classroom” while the provision of Raspberry Pi devices would “demystify. . . he architecture and the engineering of a basic computer”. Mr Quinn acknowledged there was a skills gap in Ireland in relation to information technology with a recent report by Fast-track to IT (FIT) estimating there are more than 4,500 immediate vacancies in the ICT sector in Ireland today, but he said this was a problem for countries worldwide.

“We’re not coming to it too late. We’re ahead of the curve in relation to this compared to other countries. That gap of vacancies would be twice the size in most countries in Europe and it’s a worldwide phenomenon. It’s just that the technology is developing so quickly that the education system has been slow to focus in on it,” Mr Quinn said.

Breakthrough on treatment for stroke patients with use of inflatabe wraps

 

Research finds the use of inflatable wraps to encourage blood circulation may save lives

Cheap inflatable wraps that squeeze the legs of stroke patients to encourage blood circulation may help to save lives, according to research carried out on nearly 3,000 patients in Scottish hospitals.

Deep vein thrombosis, or leg clots, are more commonly associated with long-haul travellers, but they are a real problem for hospital patients unable to move, particularly those still recovering from a stroke.

Doctors at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, working with the local university, tested compression socks which are often used by airline passengers. Neither they nor the clot-busting drugs did much to help. The drugs, in fact, led to other problems, including bleeding on the brain.

However, the inflatable leg-wraps, which are fitted around the legs and are filled with air every minute, compressing the legs and forcing the blood back to the heart, were found to improve outcomes significantly, particularly if they were worn for a month, or so.

Significant improvement

In the study at Western General Hospital, 8.5 per cent of patients using the compression device developed blood clots, compared with 12.1 per cent of patients who received the standard treatment – a significant improvement, according to researchers.

Prof Martin Dennis said: “At last we have a simple, safe and affordable treatment that reduces the risk of deep vein thrombosis and even appears to reduce the risk of dying after a stroke.”

The British Stroke Association, noting that 60,000 people a year are effectively immobile in British hospitals after a stroke, said the results were extremely encouraging and could save thousands of lives. Describing the findings as “a major breakthrough”, Prof Tony Rudd, who heads the Royal College of Physicians’ expert group, said the Scottish results were “one of the most important research studies to emerge from the field of stroke in recent years”.

Meanwhile, a study by the Stroke Association has revealed that significant differences exist in blood pressure rates – one of the key warning indicators for strokes – between different parts of Britain, with Herefordshire having far healthier figures than Lincolnshire, for example.

Patients are usually regarded as having high blood pressure if their figures are consistently higher than 140/90mmHg – an average figure produced by people from 10 different counties in England, Scotland and Wales.

“Anyone with a reading around or above this figure should seek advice from their GP. If your blood pressure is above 160/100mmHg you should seek urgent medical attention,” the Stroke Association said.

Round trip to Mars would push radiation safety limits

  

ASTRONAUTS COULD EASILY SOAK UP THEIR LIFETIME ALLOWANCE.

Although a private effort hopes to send some people on a one-way trip to Mars, chances are good that the first people to reach the red planet will be government-supported astronauts who will be taking a round trip. But one of NASA’s own instruments has just suggested that there might be an advantage to a one-way journey: a far lower dose of radiation.

The work takes advantage of a bit of hardware that NASA sent to Mars for a completely unrelated project: the radiation detector on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity. The Radiation Assessment Detector is actually two sensors; one tracks radiation via the energy it deposits in silicon, and the other watches for flashes of light that occur as radiation travels through a hunk of plastic. Agreement between the two sensors is used to determine the amount of radiation the detector is receiving.

The hardware is meant to sample the radiation environment on Mars (which also has significant implications for future exploration). But a large team of scientists realized that its travel to Mars provided a glimpse of the sorts of exposures crew members might receive during their journey through interplanetary space to Mars.

We have already sent probes to sample the radiation of interplanetary space, but all of those probes have been essentially bolted on to the exterior of the spacecraft. Humans making the journey will undoubtedly be inside a well-shielded capsule, which would (hopefully) reduce their exposure to cosmic rays and ions blasted away from the Sun. The Radiation Assessment Detector was quite different; it was located on the top deck of the rover, so the body of the robot shielded it to some extent. Further coverage was provided by the heat shield that protected the hardware while it entered Mars’ atmosphere and the equipment and fuel used to lower the rover to the planet’s surface.

Overall, the authors conclude that the shielding was probably much more irregular than humans would probably be given, but it provides some indication of what might get through even the best shielding.

Overall, the Sun isn’t much of a concern. It provided a steady background of ions that struck the detector, but these were generally low energy. There were five instances where the Sun sent off bursts of material that passed by the Mars Science Laboratory during its journey, and each of these created noticeable spikes in the amount of radiation received. Overall, though, these turned out to be a relatively small contribution to the total radiation received on the trip.

The same could not be said for cosmic rays, however. The five solar events in total only exposed the radiation detectors to the equivalent of 15 days of cosmic ray exposure. Because cosmic rays are so high-energy, it’s highly unlikely that we’re going to be putting enough shielding on any mission to keep them from passing through the crew area—it would simply weigh too much.

The rover’s cruise to Mars took 253 days, and over that time the exposure of the instrument added up to nearly 500 milli-Sieverts (one Seivert creates a five percent chance of developing cancer). Humans would probably take a shorter trip—180 day flights are possible—but would, of course, turn around and come back, getting another 180 days of exposure. If done with equivalent shielding, the shortest round trip possible would result in 660 milli-Sieverts of exposure, and that doesn’t count time spent orbiting Mars or exploring the surface.

Better, more even shielding would improve matters, but only a bit, since 95 percent of the exposure comes from cosmic rays that would pass right through most shields.

“It is clear that the exposure from the cruise phases alone is a large fraction of (and in some cases greater than) currently accepted astronaut career limits.” the authors conclude. For the ESA and Canada, these limits are 1 Sievert; NASA sets its limit as a three percent chance of developing a fatal cancer as a result of exposure. All of that would seem to indicate that any astronauts lucky enough to complete a round-trip journey to Mars would probably find themselves permanently grounded afterwards.