Friday, March 30, 2018
Toledo Room (InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile)
Why would citizens accept a government that either encourages, or turns a blind eye toward, corporate tax avoidance? Objectively, this appears somewhat irrational. Most middle income workers’ pay upward of 40% of their salary in income tax. One would assume that they would not tolerate a multi-billion multinational firm paying little or no corporate taxation. But this is precisely what the European Commission found when they investigated the tax affairs of Apple in Ireland. Across the EU, public opinion is outraged at the ability of global tech firms to avoid paying their taxes. It has become such a high salient issue that the Commission have suggested unanimity voting be removed in the European Council, when voting on the Common Consolidated Corporate tax base (CCCTB). So why are attitudes to corporate tax avoidance so different in Ireland? Our argument is that this is a form of "competitive nationalism" and it’s shaped by the role of the media. The media frame and associate corporate tax avoidance with the Ireland’s FDI growth regime. In turn, anything that is perceived to undermine this growth model (such as the EU’s finding against Apple) is considered an illegitimate and external intervention into Irish economic policy. To test this argument, we use a novel experimental survey among Irish public opinion, using different media frames to examine these causal links for the first time. Our findings suggest a very close relationship between media frames – public opinion – and popular support for country specific growth models in Europe.
