Paddy the hypocrite?
After blasting Irish tax laws Cosgrave admits tax avoidance himself!
‘I’m not always consistent’
PADDY Cosgrave admits he can be seen as hypocritical for launching a campaign against certain Irish tax structures, while availing of low-tax schemes in the US.
Yesterday, Mr Cosgrave addressed the media in relation to his recent campaign to highlight certain Irish tax measures, which some foreign investors can use to reduce the total amount of tax they pay.
However, he was instead questioned on his own companies’ taxes, particularly his venture capital fund, Amaranthine which is based in San Francisco, California, but is incorporated in the state of Delaware for tax purposes. When asked if he believed that Amaranthine’s tax structure could make him seem hypocritical, Mr Cosgrave said: ‘Absolutely.’
Defending the tax structures of Amaranthine, he said: ‘It is more tax efficient, to the best of my knowledge, to incorporate in Ireland, but that fund is operated out of the United States, we’ve an office in San Francisco. The majority of the investors are also based in the United States.’
Asked whether these actions are, in fact, hypocritical, Mr Cosgrave replied: ‘I am no saint.’
‘I cannot ensure that from the plastic that I drink out of, to the clothes on me, to the modes of transport that I take, that I am absolutely and always consistent with my views,’ he said, adding that it is up to people to decide whether this diminishes the authority of the United Nations report that found Ireland has preferential tax laws. Mr Cosgrave said that he is well aware of his own tax avoidance measures, saying that by merely establishing companies in Ireland, he is availing of tax avoidance structures.
He added, however, that Ireland’s corporate tax rate can be defended on the ‘narrow grounds’ that it is within the self-interest of the country.
‘I am certainly hurling stones from within the tax avoidance capital of the world,’ said Mr Cosgrave. ‘The problem is that Ireland is a member of a much larger trading bloc where increasingly large and very powerful nations are mobilised against our corporate tax rate.’
Defending his actions, Mr Cosgrave said the reason he wasn’t launching a similar campaign against the state of Delaware is because he is a citizen of Ireland.
‘It is like being a member of a football club or a hurling club that you might pay an annual subscription or membership fee [to]; I pay my taxes here. I think that you have a moral responsibility, especially in a very free and open society, that where you think things are wrong and you have the ability to challenge them, that you can challenge them,’ said Mr Cosgrave.
It was revealed on Tuesday that Mr Cosgrave was behind a group called the Irish Tax Agency, which he set up to highlight to European citizens a UN special rapporteur report on housing which explored the financialisation of housing and its detrimental impact on human rights, in particular the right to housing. The report concluded that Ireland facilitated housing financing through ‘preferential tax laws’. He followed this up with a Facebook page and an advertising campaign, which the social media company had to remove because it violated its policies on impersonation.
Ads were targeted at people who work for the European Commission, the OECD, the IMF, people who work for European political parties with an interest in this area, and journalists.