The Irish Prime Minister Accused EU Countries of Being Hypocritical About Corporate Taxes

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar blames the other EU countries today for hypocrisy over corporate tax, rejecting claims in the European Parliament that Ireland is a tax haven, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.

In a speech in Strasbourg, where he highlighted Dublin's commitment to the EU, Varadar responded to the unfair accusations that Ireland is harming its neighboring economies by helping multinationals like Apple to tax their world profits with low Irish taxes.

According to Varadkar, not only countries such as Hungary and Bulgaria are taxing companies with lower taxes than Ireland, but France, whose president Emmanuel Macron was particularly critical of non-payment of taxes by US technology giants, offers so many "loopholes" in the laws for some corporations, that in practice the rate may be lower.

There is some hypocrisy by looking at how much money we really collect as corporate taxes towards other countries that attract far less, but on paper their taxes are higher, he told the European Parliament.

The EU ordered Ireland in 2016 to recover a record $ 13 billion (16 billion dollars) of taxes paid by Apple, and in October started a lawsuit against it because the country has not yet executed the order.