

Dropbox is going brogue - maguay
https://blog.dropbox.com/2012/12/dropbox-in-dublin/

======
trengof
Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich Anyone?

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Double-
Irish-With-A-Dutch-Sandwich.html)

~~~
maguay
Why else Ireland? I highly think it was picked for tax purposes.

~~~
tiernano
Have you seen our Datacenter Infrastructure (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc)?
have you seen our climate (mostly cold, perfect for said datacenters)? We have
an educated workforce, are close to mainland Europe, and who doesn't want to
work in the home of the Black Stuff (Guinness). Tax _could_ be an incentive,
but think of the rest we have also.

~~~
mtts
A native English speaking work force at lower salaries than in the UK helps
too :-)

~~~
rsynnott
Though, these days, the median wage in Ireland is actually substantially
higher than in the UK.

------
7777
> Wusstest du schon, dass Dropbox ihre Nutzer in 175 Ländern

Somehow 25 countries got lost while that sentence was translated into German.

~~~
evincarofautumn
There are similar differences (oversights?) in all of the translations.

------
eccoli
So basically, dropbox makes a public announcement to tell the world (and the
shareholders) they're now engaging in tax evasion in Europe to make better
profit.

Hopefully they'll have a better story for the european authorities later on,
not like starbucks, amazon or google:
[http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/13/starbucks-
goog...](http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/13/starbucks-google-and-
amazon-the-tax-crash-of-monday-afternoon/)

~~~
MordinSolus
Tax evasion is illegal. I doubt this is illegal, as that would be an
incredibly dumb move, so it's not tax evasion.

> (and the shareholders)

Well of course they are telling their shareholders: they must be rejoicing
with the news!

Makes you wonder why we don't lower our corporate tax rate in the U.S. Hell,
both presidential candidates this election cycle agreed on that.

~~~
ed209
I'm guessing he's actually referring to tax avoidance. Not sure how long it
will last though as the UK is going be clamping down on this
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20559791>

------
qznc
Facebook also has its Europe headquarter in Ireland. Something special about
the laws there?

~~~
sargun
The tax story in Ireland is incredible. The corporate tax rate is
significantly lower than other nations, and often times, the government is
willing to make special concessions, or give tax rebates for companies
intending on making long term commitments (Amazon is best known for making
these deals).

~~~
eoin_murphy
That and they probably just got a huge grant for putting their first
translation in Irish...

But yes, the tax laws in Ireland are incredibly generous, if you're a
corporation. I say this as a person just falling into the top tax bracket
which means that while most of my wages are taxed at 21% or so (closer to
25%), any bonuses or future wage increases will be taxed at over 50% (once all
the levies etc. have been counted in). And there's also the awareness that a
significant percentage of that goes towards repaying bondholders in Anglo
Irish bank or towards public services who refuse to restructure or update 50
year old work practices. (sorry, rant over)

There is also the fact that it's an English speaking country with a pool of
relatively highly educated employees who are used to dealing with American
businesses. Wages are relatively low compared to the US or England (well,
London anyway) and you can have the best and brightest of Europe can relocate
with no visa issues (once you can convince them to relocate to a rainy island
in the North Atlantic)

~~~
rpm4321
Hey Eoin, couple of quick question for you if you don't mind. I know you're
probably not a tax lawyer, but what's the personal capital gains situation
like over there?

Also, just wondering what "morale" (for lack of a better word) is like now,
given all the bailouts, budget crises, and even church scandals. All you hear
about Ireland in the US media these days seems to be doom and gloom.

Is there a chance, given the public's hostile reaction to the bank bailouts
and economic crisis, that Ireland could tack left and start rolling back its
advantageous tax rates?

Thanks in advance.

~~~
eoin_murphy
Capital Gains Tax: I'm not a tax lawyer but there's good advice here:
[http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money_and_tax/tax/capit...](http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money_and_tax/tax/capital_taxes/capital_gains_tax.html)

Morale wise, again I don't know. I'm currently out in India but when I left 6
months ago there was (I think) a sense of just shrugging the shoulders and
getting on with life. At this point, more scandals, bailouts & controversies
would just be adding to the pile. People will complain but there won't be any
kind of mass movement in protest. We voted out the political party who were in
power during the boom years and I see now that they're back to the second most
popular party in the country.

I know a lot of young, very talented people don't see a future for themselves
in the country, don't see the point in trying to fix a very conservative
system and just leaving (this would be why we have a relatively low
unemployment rate compared to say, Spain).

The only way we'll roll those rates back is if the EU forces the changes. The
public aren't angry with companies or multinationals. They're angry with
private banks, a government which made private debt public on the insistence
of the EU and with the EU which is forcing extreme hardship to repay other EU
banks. Please note, I'm not saying the people or the Irish government is not
culpable for the current crisis - particularly the banking regulator - but
rather just trying to outline what the public see as being the problem.

~~~
rpm4321
Thanks Eoin, appreciate it.

------
w1ntermute
At first I was wondering why a Chinese translation had been omitted, but then
I realized the service was blocked by the Great Firewall.

~~~
pbiggar
Funnily enough, there's probably more native Chinese speakers in Ireland than
there are native Irish speakers!

~~~
w1ntermute
Haha, I just checked and only 2.9% of the Irish population speaks Irish
natively. That's pretty crazy.

~~~
rpm4321
When they say natively, I think they mean as a primary language. My impression
is that there's only a small percentage of people on the West Coast who speak
it daily, but Gaelic used to (and may still be) required in a lot of schools
as sort of a token secondary language (kind of like Latin in US Catholic
schools, or Hebrew schools for Jews), and a fair amount of official government
business was/is done in Gaelic.

EDIT: "secure" talks about this further down the page. He says it's still
taught in sort of a token way in the schools, but that he didn't run into any
Gaelic in his dealings with the government.

~~~
pbiggar
Irish person here, I can't speak much Irish and I cannot think of a situation
that would ever require me to, since leaving school (though since I live in
San Francisco now, its even more unlikely).

We're required to learn Irish throughout school (all the way til we finish
secondary school), and even need to pass Irish exams to get into university.

Government business can be done in Irish, but its very rare. When you see it
at the top-level, like in parliament, its almost always done for effect.

~~~
w1ntermute
Why is there a lack of interest in linguistic revival? Asserting independence
from the UK has been a big theme in Ireland for a long time. Wouldn't re-
embracing the Irish language be one prominent way of doing that?

~~~
pbiggar
There is an interest, which is why we are forced to learn it in school.
Ironically, this forces a very large amount of the country to start to hate
Irish (why are we learning this, this isn't useful, etc). IMO, making Irish
optional would be a good step to making people actually want to learn it.

~~~
w1ntermute
I think learning it as a foreign language makes it difficult to truly
internalize it. I recall reading that in some countries, they teach STEM
classes all in English, but liberal arts/social science classes in their
native language. You get to use both on a daily basis in both the spoken and
written form, rather than only in one class.

~~~
pbiggar
Funnily enough, its not taught as a foreign language. That would be much
better, because most Irish people only care about being able to speak it. Its
currently taught like Latin is - a lot of rote learning of tenses and
conjugations, then literature and poetry study.

My grandaunt is a famous Irish poet - her work is part of the curriculum. When
she tutored me she focussed on reading from newspapers and speaking out loud,
because going straight to literature makes no sense.

~~~
w1ntermute
Oh wow, that's even worse. Why would anybody be interested in that, especially
children?

I learned Japanese as a foreign language in college, and very little time in
class was spent on grammar, and not much time was spent on reading/writing. We
spent the vast majority of our time on the spoken language, which we learned
in the context of simulated real-world conversations. The result was that
while we were weak in the written language, our pronunciation and grammar was
top-notch.

We had no trouble subsequently teaching ourselves the written language (though
children might not have the initiative to do that). But if we had not properly
learned the spoken language in class and the grammar outside of class at the
same time, we might not have had the foundation necessary to progress with the
written language. It's much more difficult to teach yourself the spoken
language than reading/writing/grammar.

------
weekends
Cead uair ríomh gur chonaic mé comhlacht mhór ag usaid Gaeilge i fógra.

~~~
eoin_murphy
B'fhéidir go fuair siad mórchuid aireagaid lena chuir isteach ann? Street-cred
mar yea.

~~~
rpm4321
Sjf wrnsd asdf wioefj cszkl asdlk oiajf asdnw wsafa awsfadswef.

\- Actually, I just sat on my keyboard cuz I wanted to fit in :)

Just curious - is Gaelic still required in schools and in some dealings w/
government?

~~~
secure
AFAIK (did an internship in Dublin), irish children still learn Gaelic in
school, but not in a way that’d make them able to talk to each other in it,
much like Germans in some schools chose to learn latin. You can use the
language to decipher old pieces of history, but not to talk about how your day
was.

I’ve never heard about dealings with the government that could only be done in
Gaelic. Everything I did was in English.

~~~
eoin_murphy
Gaelic is compulsory for both primary and secondary school which means that
almost everyone will study it between the ages of 5 and 16 (minimum school
leaving age). It says something about our approach that all but a very small
minority of school leavers are effectively unable to hold a conversation in
the language.

It's been compulsory since the formation of the Irish state during that time
the percentage of actual spoken Irish (as well as general Irish comprehension)
has continually dropped. Given that the actual aim of this was to promote the
language I think it's safe to say it's been an unmitigated disaster.

My personal take on this (I went to an all Irish primary school so I was
fluent) is that there's two factors here:

1 - The way it's taught is absolutely terrible. There's a focus on the grammar
and structure of the language rather than actually speaking it. This means
that students associate it with memorizing genitive and dative cases which is
pretty boring. This means the student don't like it. Some of those students
grow up to be the teachers, and they've got a negative attitude to the
language. Wash, rinse repeat for 90 years and you get to where we are now.

2 - There's no economic incentive to learn the language. Unless you're living
in a gaeltacht (nearly all in very rural areas) you're almost never actually
going to be able to use it. It's not present in any other country and apart
from having conversations which foreigners can't understand, isn't useful.
There are reasons to learn it but they're cultural or academic rather than
practical.

There are signs of regrowth with more and more all Irish schools popping up
but my impression is that it's become a middle class status symbol to be able
to speak the language so we'll see what happens there. There's also been
discussion about reforming the syllabus to split it into conversational Irish
(compulsory) and 'academic' Irish (optional)

As for dealing with the government, you're permitted (not obligated) to
conduct all of your business with officials through Irish and demand that they
do the same with you. We have two versions of our constitution, one in Irish
and one in English. In the case of any discrepancies, the Irish one takes
precedence.

~~~
patrickk
I heard somewhere that if you give your name in Irish to a Garda (Irish
police) and the case goes to court (say you are pulled over for speeding or
something), the court case must be conducted through Irish (the Irish state
has two official languages - English and Gaeilge/Irish).

This could be a hilariously clever way to run down the statute of limitations
as barely anyone in the country speaks Irish, and that includes judges and
barristers. I think the Gardai have to pass a certain minimum level of Irish
to get into the Garda training college. This could be just an urban myth
though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

------
lvh
So, for everyone shouting "tax evasion": does that mean that any foreign
company choosing to expand to Europe in Ireland is criminal?

~~~
ed209
tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance on the scale of Amazon, Google,
Starbucks and Facebook is imoral.

It's pretty obvious that these companies have been strategically set up in
Ireland as a way of paying less tax.

You think it's acceptable that Amazon sold billions of pounds of items in the
UK and pay virtually no tax, but still use our roads to facilitate those
sales. They basically use our infrastructure for free.

Would Amazon let me use a few EC2 instances for nothing, by increasing the
hosting cost of everyone one else by a few cents, to host my multi-million
dollar website?

------
mpclark
Fiddle-dee-tax!

