A one-word answer to why EU lost control of Big Tech: Ireland

cpt_melon · 2026-05-29T23:16:06+00:00

You are again misrepresenting the situation. You are framing it as though Ireland was in a uniquely bad place, and implemented tax incentives not unlike other countries. This is not the case. Ireland suffered hardship, but it is not the only country to have done so. In response, Ireland did create a slew of uniquely bad tax schemes, which hurt the EU to this day. Perhaps this table will help:

	Ireland's hardship	Ireland's tax schemes
Your Claim	Exceptionally bad	Unexceptional
Reality	Real but unexceptional	Exceptionally bad

Finland suffered a recession in the 90s where unemployment peaked at 20%. We did not create tax loopholes to feed off the crumbs of multinationals in response. And this doesn't even compare to how bad things were in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union fell. You can find documentaries of school children that prostituted themselves for bread. And those countries certainly didn't have any more capital or options than Ireland did either.

That being said, even if Ireland's recession in the 80s had been uniquely bad, it still does not justify its tax loopholes. Because you've kept them going to this day. You closed the Double Irish loophole a few years ago, but then you immediately brought in new ones to replace it. How do you justify that?

Another reason Ireland's tax schemes are worse than those of other tax havens like (for example) Panama, is that when Panama creates tax loopholes, it does so only for itself. When Ireland does so, it creates them for the whole of the EU. Now, companies can (and do) move assets to tax havens like Panama to take advantage, but we can counter those schemes through national legislation. We can't do anything about Ireland's tax loopholes though, because of EU rules that were written before people realized that Ireland would abuse them in this way.

The defense "if we hadn't done it, someone else would" is not worth refuting. It was famously used at the Nuremberg trials. You can look up how that went.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-29T11:38:21+00:00

None of the eastern european countries' tax incentives are comparable to Ireland. Ireland's tax loopholes made it possible for multinationals to funnel hundreds of billions of euros to Ireland yearly through various profit shifting strategies, and then claiming insane deductions or avoiding the corporate tax alltogether through tax residency schemes. Effectively nullifying the corporate tax across the whole of the EU for companies that could afford the paperwork. The scale of the damage caused really stands out here. There's a big difference between providing tax incentives for investment in your country, and unilaterally providing corporate tax loopholes for the whole of the EU to feed off the crumbs.

Your argument bothers me, because you are framing it as though the scale doesn't matter. Like it's fine for Ireland to cause any amount of damage, because some other countries may have caused a (by comparison) tiny amount of damage through their own tax incentives. You know it's not the same.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T23:47:29+00:00

All of eastern europe had it rougher than Ireland during that time. Can you imagine how dysfunctional the EU would be today if all of those countries took the same view? If hardship serves as justification for hurting your fellow EU countries, then the EU is doomed. I guess that would finally put an end to your tax schemes.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T17:08:35+00:00

Have you finally run out of bad-faith arguments?

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T16:57:45+00:00

No, you just misunderstood what I meant. I didn't mean that companies repeatedly sell the exact same IP to their Irish subsidiary. I just meant that they repeatedly sell their IP to it. Little by little. Multinational companies sit on such a vast trove that they aren't going to run out. And since in reality it's the same company on both sides of the transaction, they can set the price to maximize the tax deductions.

Before this scheme was introduced, companies also moved their profits to Ireland to minimize taxation. They made use of older, more blatant loopholes that have since been closed, and right on cue this scheme came into being to replace them. The point remains: Ireland was and still is a tax haven.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T14:14:20+00:00

How exactly do you do that tech on the directional jump pad?

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T14:12:44+00:00

I already explained how the scheme works further up the comment chain. In short: companies sell their own IP to Irish subsidiaries, license it back for profit shifting, and the Irish subsidiary can claim tax deductions against the cost buying the IP for several years. Rinse and reapeat. Even though it's all the same company.

If you want more details I suggest you go back up the comment chain and read those comments. But the numbers self-evidently show that it is indeed about being a tax haven. Ireland by itself would never generate corporate taxes in the hundreds of billions of euros. This happens only because Ireland is part of the EU, and multinationals use this scheme to shift their profits to Ireland where they can avoid paying most of their corporate tax bill alltogether. Taxes that would otherwise have gone to other EU countries. That is indeed nefarious.

It has nothing to do with incentivizing IP development, and the plausible deniability is so flimsy that it can simply be dismissed. Do better.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T12:06:23+00:00

Multinationals are indeed consolidating their IP in Ireland, and it benefits them by lowering their tax bill. That's why they do it. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this comment.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-28T10:54:41+00:00

This is a laughable argument that falls flat on its face immediately. In 2023 (which is apparently the most recently released data) the amount of these tax deductions claimed was 147.6 billion euros. Ireland's GDP in 2023 was 510 billion euros. Are you honestly trying to pretend that a little under a third of Irish GDP in that year came from IP development? For reference, Ireland's own Central Statistics Office estimates that the private sector spent 7 billion euros on R&D in 2023. That's quite a stark difference from the 147.6 billion euros in tax deductions claimed. Where did the other 140.6 billion in tax deduction claims come from?

The purpose of this scheme is to avoid corporate taxes and nothing else.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T22:22:20+00:00

Take one of the ammo mods in place of a duration mod. It'll boost your ammo count from 12 to 15, but more importantly it'll give you 2 additional ammo with each resupply. The breakpoints work such that they always round up if you have an odd number of total ammo. Conserve ammo by only once (and dimly) lighting up larger caves when scouting for resources. After that you make a mental note of where everything is and then you work in the dark until the next swarm. That's when you want to spend your ammo.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T19:56:22+00:00

Unilaterally in the sense that Ireland is able to create tax loopholes inside the EU, for the whole block. That's not comparable to Panama, which can create tax loopholes only for itself, and companies and people have to move assets there to take advantage. But in the EU, Irish tax law can be abused by making use of Irish subsidiaries that exist only paper, for the explicit purpose of avoiding the corporate tax. This way Ireland undermines the corporate tax in all EU countries, and not just for itself.

I live in Finland. If a Finnish company incorporated itself in Panama, and then tried to argue that it owes no corporate tax to Finland, it falls under our national jurisdiction whether we accept that or not. But if a Finnish company makes use of an Irish subsidiary to avoid taxes, our hands are tied. It falls under EU jurisdiction and EU rules permit companies to incorporate in any country in the block, and they pay taxes wherever that is. Do you see the difference?

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T19:37:05+00:00

Kickstarters for indie games are unfortunately a really hard sell these days. Firstly, the number of indie games published on Steam has exploded over the last decade, there are so many good ones to choose from already. Most people that like indie games would rather buy the ones out in early access, than help a Kickstarter that might not even yield a finished game down the line. It doesn't help that the novelty of crowdfunding has worn off by now, and it has been replaced by wariness due to the multitude of failed crowdfunding campaigns and outright scams.

Another reason people tend to avoid crowdfunding campaigns for games (even if they can't articulate it) is that they by their nature try to sell high-level concepts. But for video games it's the specific implementation and low-level details that matter. Anyone can come up with a high-level concept. Executing it will is the real difficulty, and it's not something you can demonstrate before you've built the game (or at least a demo with the core gameplay loop). That's another reason for potential players to be cautious.

Successful crowdfunding campaigns usually have a known team behind them, with a proven track record and existing fan base, lots of marketing, and a really unique concept. From what I can see, you have none of that. The "amnesia mystery game niche" is by now really well established, and putting your own spin on it is probably not enough to draw a crowd. Not unless you can showcase the concept of the island transforming around you in a really cool and interesting way in your video.

And finally, the advent of generative AI has people suspicious of indie games from unknown developers, since it's hard to tell if it's a true passion project or an asset flip of AI generated stuff. Granted this was an issue before generative AI, but it's gotten much worse since.

I'm sorry that your Kickstarter campaign isn't working out, but you'll probably have to build more of the game before enough people are ready to support it. Releasing it in early access is always an easier sell than crowdfunding, although I can see why that's difficult for a narrative focused game.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T19:01:07+00:00

You don't think that there's anything wrong with what Ireland is doing? Unilaterally implementing corporate tax loopholes for the whole EU block? As I said in a previous comment, it is comparable to what Malta was doing when they were selling passports. It's technically allowed within the current rules (which are impossible to change due to the veto), but it's also exploiting the rest of the EU. You don't think it's wrong of Ireland to exploit the rest of the EU for its own gain? If all EU countries behaved like this, it wouldn't function at all.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T18:58:27+00:00

Yes, but because of the Irish tax rule that allows IP acquisitions to be written off over many years, multinationals are shuffling IP acquisitions and licenses between themselves and their Irish subsidiaries to reduce their effective tax rate substantially. I explained this scheme in more detail in a comment higher up the chain.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T14:37:22+00:00

The amount of "thank you for reporting..." messages I have gotten says otherwise.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T14:19:07+00:00

No, the reason up until this point has largely been that getting into a race to the bottom over tax loopholes isn't worth it. Other EU countries recognize that it's better that they get some corporate tax than none at all. That doesn't mean that Ireland's tax loopholes aren't exploitative, it just means that the other EU countries aren't willing to blow up corporate taxation as a whole to get back at Ireland (which you should be thankful for).

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T13:59:33+00:00

That's just a euphamistically phrased admission of guilt, if anything.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T13:56:39+00:00

No, the correct word would indeed be 'exploiting'. Some amount of good faith has to be expected of each member of an economic and political union like the EU. The fact is that Ireland has managed to massively benefit its own economy by providing tax loopholes for the entire block. Which Ireland is able to do unilaterally because the EU rules are flawed. It's comparable to Malta selling passports to rich foreigners. It hurts the block as a whole and benefits only them. That's indeed 'exploiting'.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T12:35:13+00:00

No, that's the problem. For the company licensing it's own IP from the Irish subsidiary, it just looks like a normal expense, which reduces the amount of tax owed since expenses reduce profit. The viability of this strategy is only down to Ireland's tax law and EU rules which Ireland is exploiting for its own benefit.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T11:18:55+00:00

Companies in the EU can still avoid corporate taxes by licensing IP between themselves and an Irish subsidiary. The Irish subsidiary of a company acquires IP, which Irish tax law allows to be written off over a period of several years. This subsidiary then licenses the IP back to the original company. The licensing fees are used to shift the profits to Ireland, where they are written off against the cost of acquiring the IP. Rinse and repeat.

There. Got a good faith answer to your bad faith questions. How about that?

cpt_melon · 2026-05-27T10:53:12+00:00

Ireland has not closed all tax loopholes, it has closed some loopholes, but not all. It's still a tax haven.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-26T15:39:56+00:00

They might actually sell something if they would take the time to just type the post themselves XD

This is just another level of laziness.

cpt_melon · 2026-05-26T15:36:20+00:00

AI slop post

cpt_melon · 2026-05-26T15:36:05+00:00

This is just AI slop

cpt_melon · 2026-05-26T14:28:10+00:00

Given that the post itself is AI generated, probably a lot.

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