Ireland

Ireland is emphatically not a tax haven, according to the head of the tax division of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Irish Times reported. The comments from Pascal Saint-Amans come in the wake of accusations made in parliamentary committees in both the US and UK that large global companies use Ireland as part of their efforts to pay minimal amounts of corporation taxes in any jurisdiction.

The European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund said yesterday that Ireland's government has passed its second-to-last review, another step toward exiting the bailout program it agreed to in late 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported today. But while the government is confident that it can finance itself entirely from the international bond markets next year, talks continue on its access to precautionary credit lines from the euro zone, the IMF or both that it can fall back on should events outside the country interrupt its ability to sell bonds.

The head of the Irish insolvency service has said people applying for bankruptcy under the new insolvency provisions will not need to hire a solicitor or barrister to go to court, the Irish Examiner reported yesterday. Lorcan O'Connor expects the service to be up-and-running by next month - with the first debt-relief notice applying from September. O'Connor said that filing for bankruptcy in Irish will cost less than €750.

A company said to have “crucial” documents relating to contract for difference positions built up by businessman Seán Quinn in Anglo Irish Bank is to provide those documents to Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the Irish Times reported. The special liquidators of IBRC had sought the documents from Gortmullan Holdings for its defence of the Commercial Court action brought by Patricia Quinn and her five children, alleging they are not liable for some €2.34 billion loans made by Anglo after September 2007 to various Quinn companies.

Sean Dunne’s biggest creditors were blocked from questioning the bankrupt developer at a meeting in the US following a new legal complaint filed against him by the National Asset Management Agency, the Irish Times reported. Mr Dunne appeared at a second creditors’ meeting in Connecticut Wednesday but avoided questions from Nama and Ulster Bank as his lawyers said that a legal complaint filed by the State loans agency prevented him from answering them.

The National Asset Management Agency has taken a fresh legal challenge against property developer Sean Dunne in a bid to stop him walking away from debts of more than €700 million in the United States, the Irish Times reported. The State loans agency, which has a judgment debt of €185 million against Mr Dunne, filed a legal complaint within Mr Dunne’s US bankruptcy proceedings in a Connecticut court seeking to block his discharge from bankruptcy, which would prevent him embarking debt-free on a fresh financial start.

Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan said today that he expects there will be repossessions by Irish banks of buy-to-let properties that are in arrears with their mortgages but hopes there will be “very few” of owner-occupied family homes, the Irish Times reported. Mr Honohan also expressed his preference for split mortgages - whereby part of the loan is warehoused for a period of time without repayments being made - over interest-only repayment solutions as the country seeks to tackle the crisis of home loan arrears that has built up in the banking system.

Dublin is facing fresh calls to hold a public inquiry into its banking crash following the broadcast of a phone call between senior executives at Anglo Irish Bank, which suggests the bank deliberately misled regulators as it sought help during the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The taped conversation between Anglo Irish executives John Bowe, head of capital markets, and Peter Fitzgerald director of retail banking, took place three days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Ireland’s low tax revenue compared to peer countries is accounted for by relatively low levels of tax paid by those at the lower end of the income spectrum, according to a study published today by the Economic and Social Research Institute, the Irish Times reported. Those on higher incomes in Ireland pay proportionately similar amounts of tax to their better-off counterparts in high-tax countries such as Germany and the Nordics.

Less than a year before European leaders hope to chalk up success for their handling of the sovereign debt crises in Ireland and Portugal, rising bond yields and long-term interest rates are causing concern over how the two countries will exit their bailout programmes, the Financial Times reported. Amid expectations that central banks in the US, Japan and elsewhere will tighten monetary policy, yields on Portugal’s benchmark 10-year bonds surged to 6.6 per cent last week from a low of 5.2 per cent in late May.