The Apple State-Aid saga reached a surprisingly abrupt conclusion a few weeks ago. While not a huge surprise that the EU’s highest court, the CJEU, took a position closer to the Commission’s original finding of State-Aid – the opinion of the Advocate General indicated this was the direction the court may go - the decisiveness of the court’s ruling was surprising.  Rather than kick the case back to the lower court and give guidance to its deliberations, the EU’s top court issued a “final judgement in the matter”.  And this final judgement “confirms the European Commiss ..read more

The elevated levels of Corporation Tax became even more elevated in the recently-published Exchequer returns for August.  On a rolling 12-month basis, the amount of Corporation Tax collected is now touching €28 billion – with the chart showing the 12-month sum needing the vertical axis to extended yet again (and probably not for the last time).  Incredibly, this means that the chart showing the cumulative totals by calendar year still works. A chart showing 11 separate series should not work but, almost without exception since 2014, the cumulative year-to-date total for a ..read more

An earlier post looked at the recent decline in the inequality of market income in Ireland. The latest updates of SILC estimates from Eurostat show that this has been maintained. Eurostat now have 2023 SILC estimates for most EU Member States – though for income it should be noted that the reference period for income in the SILC is the previous calendar year.  Thus, Eurostat’s 2023 figures for income inequality are the result of household incomes in 2022. We start with Eurostat’s S80/S20 quintile share ratio for what it terms Gross Market Income. By this measure Ireland continues to have ..read more

Can we really keep saying that? We might have expected an increase in June but the outturn was exceptionally strong.  For a single month, the €5.9 billion collected in June is second only to the €6.3 billion collected last November.   As shown below, June 2024 was by far the largest June on record. Of course, as we discussed earlier, the June receipts are also a pointer to what might happen in November.  Here’s what happens if we extend the June/November relationship for the outturn we have just seen for June 2024: a fitted value for November 2024 of €8.2 billion – wh ..read more

Ireland’s Corporation Tax revenues have been at an elevated level for some time. For the past 18 months their 12-month rolling sum has hovered around €24 billion, with little more than volatility causing it to move slightly up and down. There is no clear recent trend, but the chart of calendar year outturns could be set for another year with an annual increase. It is 2011 since the amount of Corporation Tax collected in a year was lower than the preceding year. Here are the outturns since 2014, with the line for each subsequent year being higher than the last. 2024 did slip slightly behind 2 ..read more

Figures released with the CSO’s March update of the Residential Property Price Index point to the volume of market purchases by FTBs topping out at 17,500 on an annual basis. In the 12 months to January 2024, stamp duty filings were made for 17,496 purchases by first-time buyers.  For March, the equivalent annual figure dipped to 17,275, a reduction of just over 200. This reduction is due to a fall in the number of existing dwellings purchased by FTBs.  The number of new dwellings has remained in and around 5,400 on an annual basis for the last year or so. A local peak for FTB purch ..read more

OK, we can’t be 100 per cent sure that Microsoft Ireland Research is Ireland’s largest taxpayer but it certainly is a likely candidate for being so.  The 2023 accounts are now available and like last year continue to paint a strong picture.  Let’s start with the income statement: From 2019 to 2023, turnover pretty much doubled (after previously doubling from 2017 to 2019).  Operating costs haven’t increased as rapidly with operating profits increasing by around two and a half times since 2019, to reach $23.3 billion. In recent years, the tax charged in the income statement has ..read more

This is a companion to the previous post which looked at changes in the homeownership rates in the 1991 and 2022 censuses. Here we look at more recent changes in the tenure status for households headed by an Irish or UK national using figures kindly provided by the CSO. From Census 2016 to Census 2022 the number of households enumerated headed by an Irish or UK national increased by 83,293, or 5.5 percent.  In 2022, these were 87 percent of the total households enumerated (and 89 percent of households where the citizenship of the reference person was provided, i.e. excluding “not stated ..read more

The census is a key source of reliable information on population and households in Ireland.  One important indicator taken from the census is on households’ tenure status: split between different types of owners and renters.  Since the publication of the census results on housing there has been considerable focus on the decline of Ireland’s homeownership rate relative to its peak in 1991. In the 1991 Census, there were 808,385 households enumerated as owner-occupiers from a total number of permanent households of 1,019,723.  That gives a homeownership rate of 79.3 per cent.  ..read more

Housing problems are complex but usually can be distilled back to a shortage of housing relative to demand. For those looking, it can be difficult to find somewhere to live, particularly for renters.  More housing makes it easier to find somewhere to live, though sometimes this is in dispute.  Earlier in the week we had a opinion piece that focused on prospective homeowners with a broad focus on price and a limited view on supply. On Price The piece sets out findings of research undertaken by the Bank of England: For every 1 per cent increase in lending rates, the researchers of Thr ..read more