Image: Shutterstock/Casimiro PT Image: Shutterstock/Casimiro PT IT HAS BEEN held up as one of Ireland’s biggest success stories in driving regional employment – a medical products giant with a 70-year history in the country and more than 3,000 staff dotted across 10 sites.
Since it was founded in Illinois just over 130 years ago, Abbott has steadily grown to become a global behemoth with more than 100,000 staff and over $30 billion in global sales. The company’s main operations here are run through a Bermuda-registered company, Abbott Ireland, set up in 1983. Its accounts noted that the firm would have owed €244.8 million in Irish corporate taxes at the full 12.5% rate, however that sum was reduced to zero due to its Bermuda residency.
As well as owning Abbott Ireland, it is the umbrella company for a string of international subsidiaries, including various firms based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Costa Rica, Gibraltar and the Bahamas. Abbott Products’ 2017 accounts include a note that from 2021 the company “may be regarded as tax resident in Ireland” assuming certain conditions weren’t met, meaning its worldwide taxable profits would be subject to Irish corporate tax after the ‘double Irish’ loophole closed permanently.
Meanwhile, Abbott Ireland – the company’s main Irish operating arm with more than 3,000 staff on its payroll – is designated an ‘external company’ with a branch in the Republic, a structure that sheltered its finances from inspection for over three decades. Abbott would not say how much corporate tax it had paid in Ireland across all its subsidiaries when contacted by TheJournal.ie, however a spokeswoman said that over the past five years it had contributed “almost €2 billion to the Irish economy” in taxes, payroll and purchases.
The company is just one of a string of multinationals to use Irish-registered companies resident in tax havens like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands in parallel with its main local operations: a structure that coined the ‘double Irish’ nickname several years ago. The firm also met with Creed to make sure its interests were protected in the case of Brexit in late 2016, while in early 2017 then-housing minister Simon Coveney invited the company to make a presentation at the launch of the National Planning Framework.
The good news is contained in the closing paragraphs. Because of 2017 tax changes, Abbott will no longer be able to shelter its worldwide earnings from US corporate tax. Already $1.46bn payable to the US treasury and more to come.
scrahallia I wonder how much made its way in to the hands of corrupt ffFG politicians.....banana republic
Obviously with some help from the Irish government
'Shelter profits' lol, I see what you did there lads don't want anything that might upset Dinnu