Items tagged with Ireland
Cyber-attacks have seemingly ramped-up in the last few weeks, like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident that netted a cool $5 million for the criminal attackers. Now, cyber-thugs have crippled the Irish Health Service Executive's (HSE) computer systems in what could be "the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state," notes Irish minister of state Ossian Smyth. Yesterday, the Twitter account for the HSE, the primary health service provider in Ireland, tweeted that there has been a significant ransomware attack on its systems. To help contain this attack, the org decided to shut down all of the systems "in order to protect them from this attack and to allow us fully assess the...
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Apple’s longstanding beef in the European Union over allegations of tax dodging has finally come to a dramatic end (pending an appeal, of course). In essence, Apple simply delayed the inevitable, as the European Commission is ordering that the American tech giant repay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in back taxes to Ireland, plus interest. At the center of the complaint is the “Double Irish” loophole, which allowed Apple to funnel profits through two subsidiaries: Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. According to the European Commission, these were companies in name only, and simply existed on paper to "substantially and artificially [lower]” Apple’s tax burden with the European...
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Ireland will be closing a tax loophole next year that helped save tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter billions of dollars. But while the loophole will end next year, companies already using it will be able to continue the practice until 2020. "Aggressive tax planning by the multinational companies has been criticized by governments across the globe and has damaged the reputation of many countries," said Ireland’s finance minister Michael Noonan to the Irish Parliament. "I am abolishing the ability of companies to use the ‘double Irish’ by changing our residency rules to require all companies registered in Ireland to also be tax resident." The...
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The luck o’ the Irish is going strong, apparently, as Intel is planning to build a plant in Ireland for the purpose of manufacturing 14nm chips which will reportedly create 800 permanent tech jobs and 3,500 construction jobs. According to Silicon Republic, the project should take two years to complete at a total cost of $4 billion. The new facility will be built at the existing Intel campus at Leixlip in Co Kildare. The total square footage (er, metre-age) will be 244,819 square metres and will include a three-story fab, a building for housing liquid chemicals and wastewater, a two-story boiler and chiller, emergency power facilities, a five-level parking garage, and more. Leixlip campus...
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A report in Business Week shows us one way that Google keeps its bottom line up. Using a complicated structure, the company sends most of its overseas profits overseas to known tax havens. With that, Google's corporate overseas tax rate is a low, low 2.4 percent. For a company with the unofficial motto of "Don't be evil," this seems, well, evil. Or at least it seems unethical. However, as a corporation, trying to maximize process for its shareholders is not evil or unethical. That said, the rest of the taxpayers in the U.S. don't have to like it, but honestly, Google isn't the only corporation to take such measures. What's amazing is the incredibly low tax rate Google has, because it's much lower...
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It's a sad day for the people of Limavady, a city in Ireland's County Derry, especially for the hundreds of local Seagate employees are that are going to be looking for new jobs once Seagate closes their facility in Limavady.Company spokesperson Woody Monroy didn't mention if any of the employees will be transferred to other locations such as the Springton facility in County Londonderry, but it seems doubtful based on the stated reasons for closing the Limavady plant:“Monroy did not know how much money the company would save from the move but said it is part of Seagate's ongoing effort to streamline operations. He said Seagate expanded substrate manufacturing at its facilities in Singapore and...
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Sales of consumer electronics in the United States are expected to reach $155 billion dollars for 2007, up from $145 billion in 2006. That's larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Singapore, but not quite the whole output of goods and services of Ireland. Behind the strong performance was surging sales of digital consumer electronics such as flat-panel televisions. Those same products will propel the industry in 2007, says the CEA. The TV industry alone is predicted to be worth US$26 billion as shipments of LCD (liquid crystal display) and PDP (plasma display panel) sets reach 19 million units in 2007 thanks to lower prices, says the CEA. The next-generation game console...
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