Economy

‘You will see an increase in corporate tax, then it will dry up’: the architect of the OECD rules on Ireland’s future

Pascal Saint-Amans predicts how the corporate tax regime he designed, and which came into force this week, will play out for the Irish exchequer

Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD centre for tax policy and administration. Multinational companies with a turnover in excess of €750 million are subject to a new minimum rate of 15 per cent following the introduction of his reforms. Picture: Getty

Pascal Saint-Amans remembers the day he first picked up the phone to call Michael Noonan, the then minister for finance.

It was early 2012 and Saint-Amans had just been appointed as director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. The French national had been handed the task of stopping the race to the bottom on global corporate tax competition.

“When I got the mandate to work on the Beps (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) project, the first thing I did was call Michael Noonan and tell him that something big is going to happen. I told him it was better if Ireland participated rather than trying to resist,” Saint-Amans, the architect of the landmark tax reforms, told the Business Post.