● 05.27.18

●● The Irish Knowledge Development Box (KDB) is Just Another Tax Evasion Ploy

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Nothing to show for it…

Summary: Ireland — like several other nations across the world — opens to business by basically giving tax breaks to large companies under the guise of ‘innovation’ (as measured superficially by quantity of patents etc.)

What are “patent boxes”? As we explained before, it’s tax evasion ploys, constructed by and for those who have an ‘allergy’ for paying taxes and also have legions of lobbyists with access to lawmakers [1, 2].

“To suggest that SMEs have something to gain from this “Knowledge Development Box” nonsense is like suggesting that SMEs want or would benefit from the Unified Patent Court (UPC).”“The Knowledge Development Box [KDB] allows companies to access a lower rate of corporate tax,” Irish media has just explained. As expected and predicted all along, however, these “boxes” (which involve patents) are just being used for tax evasion under the guise of being deserved as a reward for “innovation” (variant of the “job creator” myth). In practice, suffice to say, only by massive/foreign corporations get these tax reliefs, i.e. at the expense of local SMEs (the latter would have to pay higher taxes to compensate for the formers’ tax cuts or suffer national deficits).

As the Irish media put it:

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The government says it included features in the KDB to specifically encourage small and medium businesses (SMEs) to make claims.

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One such feature was that smaller companies may be able to claim relief on assets which are patentable, but not patented. As opposed to larger companies that may only claim relief in respect of searched and examined patents or copyrighted software.

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In order to make a claim, companies need to apply to for certification that the assets are eligible. The Knowledge Development Box KDB Certification of Inventions Act was passed last year.

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However, the Minister for Finance has admitted that so far no SMEs have applied for the KDB certificate.

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Don’t expect them to, either. To suggest that SMEs have something to gain from this “Knowledge Development Box” nonsense is like suggesting that SMEs want or would benefit from the Unified Patent Court (UPC). They would only suffer. █

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