For Connolly, the point is CT isn’t where we’re focused on collecting tax from. Thousands of jobs creating lots of PAYE is generally a good thing

The low CT (12.5% or whatever lower amount they manage to do) brings in those jobs. Those jobs pay lots of tax. We all end up better off.

The ones who should be complaining are the Americans, not us.

Remind us again Tom. Was it the “loony left” who bailed out the delinquent banks and passed €100+ billion of odious debt onto the backs of the people which has crippled the country economically for near on a decade?

This merger is merely another corporate ruse to allow the multinational parasites to avoid making even the bare minimum contribution to the society and the workers that they prey on.These capitalist entities exist for the sole purpose of accumulating profit which is always achieved on the backs of workers and society generally.

As we’re discussing the pharmaceutical sector here, we saw another stark example of this last week with the announcement that the last line of defence in antibiotics has now been breached and as a result multi drug resistant strains of bacteria are poised to kill many many people into the future.
What wasn’t clearly communicated though was the reason that new antibiotic development has virtually stopped is due to the brutal logic of the market as explained by the World Health Organisation:

“Another reason is commercial. Antibiotics, in particular, have a poor return on investment because they are taken for a short period of time and cure their target disease. In contrast, drugs that treat chronic illness, such as high blood pressure, are taken daily for the rest of a patient’s life. “Companies have figured out that they make a lot more money selling the latter drugs than they do selling antibiotics,” Spellberg says, highlighting the lack of incentive for companies to develop antibiotics. That’s why many companies have stopped developing antibiotics altogether”

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/2/11-030211/en/

Capitalism exists only to exploit and will never meet the needs of the majority of humanity.

Hey Wally, I’m still waiting for an answer to a simple question I posed to you on 29th October 2015:
‘In very simple, basic words, with no long spiel about capitalism etc, can you please explain how ANY business could operate without the ambition of making profit?’

Wally were did I say that the loony left bailed the banks, that was wrong.
Hindsight is wonderful and we are all experts now on what should have been done.
Personally I’d love to see people still held accountable and jailed, David Drumm etc.
None of that means there isn’t a loony left, privatise Dell being a classic example.
Not all left is loony, Catherine Murphy is an example of reasonable balance.
To far left or right and you’re into the margins the loonies live in, Wally I’m sure that’s were you live because it’s certainly not in reality

Tom,
The bank bailout is not in the past and was an is the brainchild of the right wing establishment. The cost of the bailout is still being imposed on the people by the right wing coalition of FG & Labour through water charges, home taxes, USC, vicious health and education cutbacks etc etc etc.

As you seem interested in reality. Have you any comment to make on the reality of the failure of the market to develop new desperately needed antibiotics?

Funny how some people commenting here are so PC, Yet if you scratch a bit you’ll find the nod and wink culture alive and well. It’s the old slightly pregnant defense.

Hi Wally, the big multinational pharmaceutical companies ARE developing new antibiotics – they’re just keeping them in a secret laboratory which is accessed by members of the Bilderberg Group. You see, the capitalist neo-con right wing elite are engaged in a global conspiracy to exploit the ordinary worker and just waiting for the deadly chem-trails you see behind airplanes in the sky to infect and slowly kill all poor people. By then the rich oligarchs will have created enough money at the click of a keyboard stroke to live in a hollowed-out mountain retreat where they will drink blood and take exclusive antibiotics the rest of us can only dream of.
Obviously.

Wally – we need to ask what “tax” is. It is the demand for monies which may be justified or not. It is extortion if it is unjustified and you do not agree to it.
Why should any entity pay demand monies (which is a proxy entity to exchange for materials and work) without a very good reason?

For example why should a company or private citizen pay much more than they cost the nation to host? Increase state spending in infrastructure such as roads and utilities would certainly be a factor in tax payment for a business but should a pharmaceutical companies tax pay for social welfare or a public service pension which it has nothing to do with? Similarly should a private citizens taxes be used to pay for a collapsed private banking ponzi scheme which it has nothing to do with?

There is no doubt that an international corporation has the ability to decline setting up in a state that it feels is demanding too much tax but for an individual it is not such as easy choice.
A lot of times tax in not a moral obligation but an excessive demand under threat of menace = extortion

I fully agree Wally that companies should pay their share, in an ideal world. But countries will continue, understandably, to try and attract them to their individual jurisdiction. That’s unlikely to change in the short term, so for our own interest we are better off with them than not.
Taking the high moral ground won’t pay the bills, that’s reality.
I’m not an expert on antibiotics and don’t pretend to be, I heard recently super bugs have got past the last line of antibiotics.
Here’s another reality, the human population is growing at an unsustainable level, already just TODAY there are over 100,000 more people on the planet. http://www.worldometers.info/
Eventually nature will run it’s course and we (the human race) will have our population brought back down or out.
Whether that’s from a lack of new antibiotics or some other natural occurrence or an unnatural one like war, it will happen.
Find a reason to be happy today, as the saying goes, yesterday is history & tomorrow is a mystery but today is a present. Over and out, I’m back to my real life :)

Oh one last question for you Wally,
What have any of your AAA or PBP (I don’t think all SF fall into this bracket) actually contributed to the pot ????
You know the pot, It’s the big pot that your dole comes out of, civil servants pay etc etc.
I’ll tell you what they contribute……….. nothing, because they are takers.
My entitlements, rather than what I got off my ar*se and worked for

Joe you are right but this merger does not necessarily mean more jobs. I hope they can bring themselves to at least pay half or even a third of the corporation tax the little people have to pay – is that too much to ask???

Tom Kenny, remember that Ruth Coppinger suggested nationalising Dell. Now that’s looney left.

So Tom, you give the left absolutely loads of grief for something they may or may not do at maybe some point in the future, but when is put to you that the right have already bankrupt the country and plunged generations not even alive yet into debt, all you have to say is “that was wrong” and you jump straight back into thrashing the left. Your, and the rights, arrogance is absolutely fcuking amazing. The left hasnt done anything wrong to this country yet. The right has crippled it so they could line their own pockets. Wake the fcuk up people.

Tom,
“companies should pay their share, in an ideal world”

Enough of the impotent forelock tugging to the tax dodging multinationals please.

No capitalist firm produces a single item or employs a single person without the expectation of profit. The products & services and the profit are created by the workers, not the employer. The workers are the real creators of wealth, the goods and services on which we all depend. Capitalists confiscates the excess value that the workers create over and above their wages. This is how capitalism works and it’s intrinsically exploitative.

Or did you imagine that Pfizer, Google etc were creating jobs as a social service and doing us all a favour?

It’s aggregate demand (people needing stuff in basic terms) that creates jobs, not capitalism. Capitalist firms will not create a single job and attempt to meet that demand without the expectation of profit. There is a vast demand in the developing world for the basics like food and we’ll be waiting until eternity before capitalism meets that need.

The corporate profit manifests itself in the form of money. Modern fiat currency money is created (and deleted) at will on the computer keyboards of the world’s commercial and central banks. So the sovereign floating currency issuing state faces no financial constraint within the domestic currency and never needs to obtain its own money from private owners of capital. (Ireland unfortunately has tied itself into the monetary straitjacket of the Euro for the moment)

The real wealth of goods and services that we all depend on is created by the labour and skill of the working class from the raw material of the planet as explained. Money is a claim on that real wealth produced by the working class and this is where money derives it’s power.
The money wage that the workers receive is always less than the value of the goods they produce.

So to summarize. The workers create the real wealth of goods and services. The money is created at will on computer keyboards. The corporations only employ people and pay wages in order to accumulate the money by exploiting labour.

So can you explain why we (the working class) need these parasitic corporations at all?

P.S. the lack of new antiobiotcs is not a “natural occurrence”. It’s the result of the logic of capitllism as explained.

Nor is the impending environmental catasptrophe of climate change a natural occurrence but is also an outcome of anarchic and infinitely greedy capitalism. The choice facing humanity is socialism or barbarism and that reality is beginning to dawn on even that great poster boy of the free market and the richest capitalist on the planet, Bill Gates.

http://usuncut.com/climate/bill-gates-only-socialism-can-save-us-from-climate-change/

Hahahahaa @thebull. ‘The left hasnt done anything wrong to this country yet’ YET!!
Hahahaaaa! Brilliant.

Wally comes out with this statement ‘no organisation employs people without the expectation of profit’ as if it’s one of the most profound utterances ever made – well D’UHHHH Wally!

Another classic is “the money wages workers receive is always less than the value of the goods they produce” – so someone who assembles a €10,000 diamond ring should be paid €10,000?!!
What about the guy who puts the windscreen wipers on a car on an assembly line? Should he be paid €25,000? Should the guy who installs 4 seats be paid more than the guy who puts on two wing mirrors? Do they all get €25,000? But then the car that sells for €25,000 could cost €500,000 to make! Oh dear Wally…dear oh dear oh dear.

Tom The looney left as you call them actively campaign to keep our corporate tax rate as it is. Nice try at political point scoring though.

Bondage Informer
Fair points but I would argue that taxation is in itself neither positive or negative. The problem really is the motivation of the governments which are imposing the tax, on who and for whose benefit. In reality most governments are acting in the interests of the minority capitalist class and not in the interest of the majority who elected them. The tax structures which facilitate multinational tax dodging as in the article above reflect this. We have a façade of democracy only.

Taxation can be a mechanism for the state to redistribute the wealth which society collectively has created. In reality it’s the labour class which produces all of the products and services which humanity depends on. However, under the capitalist system most of that wealth ends up in the hands of the capitalist class who creates nothing but exploits the productive capacity of labour to accumulate profit. That profit is generated by the workers in the excess value they create through their labour over and above the wages they receive.

The state if it’s acting in the interests of a majority can attempt to recoup some of the corporate profit back through taxation which can then be redistributed back to the majority who actually created the profit via social supports like health, education, infrastructure etc. (This assumes of course that the democratic state is acting in the interests of the majority which we know is not the case as the catastrophic bank clearly demonstrated.)

Now it appears that even this bare minimum level of fairness is no longer possible in the world of corporate profit shifting and tax avoidance which allows the multinationals to make virtually no contribution to the workers and society which they prey on. If governments really wanted to bring the multinationals to heel they could simply deny them access to the market within the U.S or the Eurozone for example until they paid their fair share in tax. This would bring the corporations running to pay their tax bills but doesn’t happen of course as those governments serve the corporations and not the people.

Another critical point is that modern fiat money is not a scare resource. Governments create it at will via their central banks and can spend money into existence within the limits of the economy to produce goods and services to buy with the money. Money is a claim on the real wealth produced by the working class and this is where money derives its power over us.

Therefore a sovereign floating currency issuing state e.g. Britain never needs to obtain its own currency from private sources through taxation. In this context, taxation should be seen as a way to reduce the spending power of corporations rather than a government needing to obtain money to spend on infrastructure, utilities and its social program. The government will never face a shortage of its own money to implement its policies though it could of course have a lack of real resources e.g. skilled labor. Taxation should if it was operating democratically significantly reduce the wealth of the wealthiest corporations and individuals and so reduce their claim on the real resources which society has produced collectively.

In practical terms, taxation still needs to happen as it serves 2 critical functions. Taxation is in reality is what actually ‘backs’ a fiat currency. Everybody needs to obtain the currency in order to pay their taxes which are payable only in the named currency and so everybody accepts the currency in payment for labour, goods etc. The government imposed tax liability creates a demand for the currency, ensures it is widely accepted and so gives the currency legitimacy.

Secondly taxation is the mechanism by which money is removed from the economy. Government spending creates new money from nothing and puts it into circulation while taxation removes money from circulation and extinguishes it. Therefore the money supply does not expand beyond the ability of the economy to produce goods & services to purchase with the money in circulation and so prevents damaging levels of inflation.

There’s an easy way to test whether “the market” is a good way to get new drugs developed, and that is to look at the number which have been developed under alternative economic systems. Soviet Russia, for example, lasted from 1918 to 1991, and in those years produced zero new drugs. Communist China has done rather better. Almost 1% of drugs sold in China were developed there, although most of them are reformulations of western medicines.

And the Award for Biggest Load of Waffly Shyte goes to…..
WALLY MOONEY!!!
again.

Ben,
I think you’re confusing the “market” with science. Also important to note that true democratic socialism lasted In Russia for about 6 years from 1917 -23 until it collapsed under massive external attack from capitalist governments and internally under Stalin’s power grab.

Ya see Wally ol’ chum…not even communists could make communism work.
*chuckle

at 12.5% we would be looking at 6-8 billion in tax collected each year… I’m going to guess we will see 6-8 million if we are lucky…

Irish have the world’s best creative minds that we do not need to be a globalist puppet, our problem are the politicians who operate a nepotistic corrupt system where efficiency, organisation and such creativeness is suffocated and pushed abroad. We end up importing globalist corporations who have no interest in public health, just money. A few temporary jobs are created and the politicians are voted back in, the whole cycle starts again. Believe in yourself Ireland, believe in Irish people.

It should also be understood that much of the scientific advancement of the past century have been driven directly and indirectly by the state and not through private enterprise. Corporations are extremely reluctant to undertake the long and costly foundational research and development necessary to drive science and technology forward and indeed why would they when that cost can be borne by the state?

The science behind the current information age is a good example of this. All the component technologies which make the modern Smartphone possible such as GPS, the lithium ion battery, LCDs, touch screens, voice recognition software etc were developed through state funded research. Indeed the foundation technology of the Internet itself (TCP/IP) was not developed by private enterprise. It was created by the U.S Dept of defense and assorted other U.S government agencies and universities. After decades of research and development in the public sector, the powerful new communications technology was following market dogma handed over to the private sector to be exploited for profit.

As ever under the capitalist system, cost is socialised and profit is privatised

Wally, next time you’re ill make sure you avoid taking any of the drugs made by Pfizer and their axis of evil. You sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite by feeding the greedy capitalist corporate machine as they try to prey on you by offering lifesaving drugs. I’m sure the AAA could recommend a suitable witch doctor that can administer some mumbo jumbo alternative for no profit. You could pay him with a chicken or something.

Yes Colin. YET. They might well mess it up. They are politicians. That remains to be seen. What is beyond question, without doubt, not an opinion, a cold hard fact is that the right bankrupt this country and now they are going down the exact same road again. So you carry on being smug and insulting people, but it won’t change the fact that FF/FG sold out this country and it’s people. That’s not open for debate, which is why you resort to name calling.

David,
Let’s hope you don’t develop toxoplasmosis then as you will have to pay the capitalist vulture below $700 for each tablet to save your life. (They cost $13.50 before he bought the company).
Or maybe if you can’t afford then the state will step in and save your short sighted capitalist skin under our universal (socialist) healthcare system. Or maybe you’ll stick by your capitalist principles and die screaming instead?

“This guy’s drug company upped the price of a life-saving tablet from $13.50 to $700”
http://www.thejournal.ie/drug-price-increase-2344865-Sep2015/

Pfizer and their kind of course will let you die on the street unless you can afford their products.

Still waiting Wally…

First off, this merger will not create thousands of jobs here. In fact it will probably result in job losses in the pharmaceutical sector here. Pfizer aren’t going to just fire everyone at corporate HQ and open a new one here. In fact they’re barely going to move staff at all This is also not a merger is a tax fiddle using a set up where on paper the smaller company will take over Pfizer.What it will do though is bring the wrath of god down on the Irish tax system from the likes of the US and the UK. This has been all over Bloomberg, CNBC, Sky, CNN and just about every other international news agency this afternoon. Hell, even RTE don’t view this as anything positive. It will just confirm to the economic big boys that Ireland is a tax haven.

You know very little young Tommy.

This tax inversion is a scheme of tax avoidance, taking Pfizer from a high Corporation Tax rate of 25% to less than 5%. It would be astonishing naivety to think that the full rate of 12. 5%.

There is a massive social cost to tax avoidance. The benefits are shared with very few. FDI onky benefits a very few.

@ Rasputin

Factually incorrect. The new company can only remain Resident in Ireland for tax purposes if it is managed and controlled here. So yes, they do have to move the Board here and several senior staff will have to relocate to Ireland.

@ Fiona

They will pay 12.5% on taxable profits, same as everyone else. You are confusing revenue with profit.

Secondly, having the HQ of one of the world’s largest companies here is an enormous benefit. Just look at their R&D spend alone here. that will only increase with senior management being stationed here. Then you have industry clustering etc, PRSI (14.75% in total) income tax, USC. Completely incorrect to say it only benefits a few.

It’s hard to know what’s loony these days. I mean, thinking that being the World’s biggest tax shelter is going to trundle on forever with no plan B … I’d call that pretty loony.

..great example of the bad side of Pharma, and sure bucket in everyone else while you are at it. Some greedy b&&&D who went out an setup his own company as a fly by night operator to just screw people over..People like to tar everyone with the same brush and its easy to make sweeping comments but what about the fact that Pfizer has so far donated over 500 million doses of its Trachoma drug in Africa. For further facts, Drug pricing is agreed with each individual country and government and usually driven by cost of production versus profit. Despite misconceptions in general Pharma net profit margins are not massive compared to other industries, services. This is due to the huge R&D costs , years of clinical trials, and massive effort and operations required to get a drug to market, This typically takes 7-8 years, and then you have a licence for 7 years to sell the drug before someone else can make a copy/generic version.

What you think or believe has nothing to do with corporate realities Tommy, that’s my point.
Like Clint Eastwood says, “Fairs got nothing to do with it”
I would love to live in an equal, fair society.
I spend quite a bit of my time working voluntarily helping vulnerable people, while you are busy moaning Tommy

Forgive me if i don`t believe you Tom, But reckon you are a bit of a bullshit artist when it comes to saying you give time voluntarily helping vulnerable people, every post you make on lots of other articles paints you as a complete opposite of what you say you do, You don`t seem to show one shred of empathy to anyone, and seem to celebrate the mighty Euro,at every given step.
Also your comments like “loony left” all the time, where you somehow seem to blame them on all the woes of this country, when it is actual fact the Right thinking parties that have perpetrated this mess and destroyed the Country, Economy and social fabric of this Country.

Sorry if I don’t fit comfortably into a box for you there Motherofdivinejebus,
you are the one that chooses to see people as painting their colors etc.
I admire people that can accept personal responsibility for their lives, instead of playing the blame game. I forgive you seeing as you asked for my forgiveness, but you are wrong.
Also I don’t blame the loony left for anything except living in a fantasy world,
Equally I agree that corruption and greed is rife among the right,
Why does it always have to be one or the other, I’ll say it once more….. balance

Income Tax, USC, Employer PRSI, Employee PRSI, Pension contributions, VAT, RCT, Corporate Tax on profits (not revenue), LPT, commercial rates and water charges, to name just a few.

These companies pay an awful, awful lot of tax.

For everybody: The spelling bee is next door.

For f()cks sake, there is no next door.

That report used a small local company in France which led to very misleading results, they did not study tax rates for multinationals or corporations.

Who cares about the odd typo but it’s hard to read when the spelling is that bad.

It’s still a merger Tom, which means both companies will become one single entity. There will be job losses but I would assume that most will be lost in America as Pfizer’s HQ will be moving from there to Ireland.

Follow your own logic Jason, as Pfizer’s HQ will be moving from there to Ireland that would most likely bring (limited) new jobs with it (to Ireland). It doesn’t suggest anywhere that their operational plants will merge

They will only have board meetings in ireland for top executives. There is no change in operational headquarters.

Tom, certainly there will be job losses. Anyone who has worked for either company will tell you that. Duplication of efforts in some areas. Synergies will be found by an integration team and cuts will be made. Nothing drastic though and most likely fairly short term.

It would be interesting if The Journal did a follow up article 12 months post merger to see how close the combined company comes to paying the mythical 12.5% corporate tax rate on their worldwide profits and how much disappears to other jurisdictions in the Caribbean.

Alex the corporate tax take here almost doubled over the past year, we collected almost 2 billion euro more from corporations than we expected at the start of the year.

Clearly these companies are paying substantial tax to the state. Of course you could argue we should get nothing anyway, if Apple sells an iphone to a Russian consumer, why would they pay tax on the profits from that to the Irish Exchequer? Makes no sense.

Whether or not we should be receiving tax from these multi-nationals is a different matter. My original point was that the news of the merger and moving the resulting company’s tax base to Ireland will pretty much be a neutral affair for Ireland.

My comment about the corporate tax rate was in response to Tom Kenny who seemingly believes that the resulting company will be paying 12.5%. I don’t think they will (just my opinion with historical precedence from other huge multi-nationals). I’m not arguing that I would not do the same if I were in control of my own mega-corp!

The jobs will stay here in Ireland. The company’s administrative headquarters will remain in the USA. It’s a paper decision and in my opinion, will be neutral to Ireland. We will neither lose nor gain from it – that’s all.

Alexander where did I say they’d pay 12.5% ? You said they’d pay nothing, which I disagree with. Going on others it will be less than 12.5% but not the 0% you are saying. Stop twisting