Taxing plot comes together in one scene

The timing involved in the Luxleaks/ Jean-Claude Juncker/G20 meeting in Australia makes the Love/Hate plots look somewhat pedestrian.

Consider how these plot strands are coming together: Juncker will be representing the European Commisison in Australia at the gathering of the body that commissioned the OECD's base erosion project; Juncker heads the European Commission and it is investigating Luxembourg; and Juncker is the main political architect of Luxembourg's tax-avoidance assistance industry. Meanwhile the media has yet to get a proper response to the Luxleaks controversy from Juncker.

It’s the sort of all-the-strands-of the-plot- coming-together device that makes people continue with the box set long after they should have gone to bed.

Meanwhile Ireland's Department of Finance must also be fretting about whether the increased global focus on multinational tax avoidance might suck Ireland back into a starring, as against a subsidiary, role in the ongoing drama.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan’s decision to announce the less-than-immediate demise of the Double Irish was a good PR move, and as long as Ireland holds its powder on the detail of its patent box venture, the plotline should remain focused elsewhere.

Unless, that is, the commission was to announce it had other concerns about Ireland, over and above the Apple case. Reports of that nature featured in the weekend newspapers, but the word is that they have the wrong end of the stick.

The reports said the commission is now taking an interest in Revenue Commissioner rulings to do with companies other than Apple, but it is understood that the way the script worked was the commission sought, and got, a range of rulings from the Irish authorities at the outset of its inquiry.

It then decided that two involving Apple were the only ones of interest.

The last thing Ireland Inc wants is some multinational Nidge returning from the dead, bearing hard-to-explain Revenue Commissioner rulings that look odd alongside our oft-repeated claim to run a straightforward regime where everyone pays 12.5 per cent.

Though Juncker might be happy.