Occasionally, people post in this blog criticizing economic development success stories such as Ireland. On that point, I am unrepentant. Attracting large scale business investment into your province must be a top priority in poor places like New Brunswick.
According to this article, the Dublin subsidiary of Microsoft paid almost $1 billion in corporate taxes to Ireland between 2001 and 2004.
$ 1 billion in four years.
Now let’s put a little perspective on this, shall we? New Brunswick’s total government budget for this year is just over $6 billion. Total corporate taxes to support this budget are $152 million (that’s according to the government’s own data). Microsoft, one company, pays almost double in corporate taxes in Ireland than every corporation in New Brunswick combined.
Since you asked, Microsoft in the U.S. paid $4.4 billion last year in corporate taxes.
So the lesson here is that we need to attract companies because they contribute vast amounts to the public purse (directly and indirectly).
Since you asked, NB generates approx. $608/per person in corporate tax compared to $1833/per person in Ontario.