Low corporate tax rates made Ireland a popular site for multinational corporations to establish headquarters and declare their profits, which played an important role in the country’s boom. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook have set up headquarters in Ireland, but most of them have very few employees in the country. These firms pay a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent in Ireland, which is just over a third of the 35 percent they would pay in the United States. Because of this dynamic, Irish GDP is inflated by global firms booking huge revenues through Ireland for tax purposes. When one looks at Irish GNP, which takes out such revenues, growth declined by 2.5 percent in 2011.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 634