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This student-run event takes place this weekend and features an excellent set of guest speakers: details here.

One of the speakers is Casey Mulligan (Chicago) – recent WSJ interview/profile here.

Details here.

This paper by Keith Walsh (Revenue Commissioners) is illuminating on the taxes paid by US firms in Ireland and explains the differences between Revenue-sourced tax data and the BEA-sourced data – here.

The issue of effective tax rates, especially for the corporate income tax, rightfully continues to attract a lot of attention.  The front page of The Irish Times features a story by Carl O’Brien which is based on a recent paper produced by Prof. Jim Stewart.  The paper argues that:

“data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis gives a more accurate estimate of effective tax rates for US subsidiaries operating in Ireland and elsewhere. This data shows that for 2011, US subsidiaries operating in Ireland have the lowest effective tax rate in the EU at 2.2%.”

The paper provides a useful critique of the World Bank/pwc report on effective tax rates but to argue that the BEA data tells us anything about effective tax rates in Ireland is wide of the mark.

For Ireland, the BEA data indicate that, in 2011, US companies here had $144 billion of net income and paid an affective tax rate of 2.2 per cent.  The low effective tax is correct but it wasn’t achieved in Ireland.

There is nothing close to $144 billion of US MNC profits in Ireland.  Such massive profit figures do not appear in the statistics produced by either the CSO or the Revenue Commissioners.  The gap between GDP and GNP is large but it is not that large. 

The post continues below the fold. Apologies for the length.

Thanks to generous donations from alumni, TCD Economics is offering some PhD scholarships. Details here.