Transfer Pricing: Some Empirical Evidence from Ireland

Ireland has extensive corporate tax allowances and low rates of corporation tax. Thus connected companies have an incentive to switch profits to Ireland using transfer pricing. This article examines value added and trade statistics of certain chemical and food sectors published by the CSO in Ireland. These data were found to be consistent with switching profits to Ireland using transfer pricing. To date in Ireland, the main debate centring on the use of transfer pricing has been the distortion to economic statistics. However it is likely that tax‐collecting authorities in other countries are concerned with tax strategies associated with profit‐switching transfer pricing (pstp). This article shows that Ireland is important in terms of tax savings for several large US‐based MNCs and as a corollary to this Ireland is also important in terms of investigations by the Internal Revenue Service of the US.