Democracy Challenged

Tax as Antitrust: Why Corporate Profit Taxation Is the Real Wealth Tax Debates about inequality often revolve around wealth taxes. The argument runs that if the top 1% hoard an ever-larger share of global wealth, then the way to fund a social state is to skim a portio…

Why taxing corporate profits isn’t just about revenue — it’s about counter-power. Think of it as antitrust by other means: clipping the wings of monopolies before their rents harden into dynastic wealth and political dominance.

democracychallenged.com/2025/09/22/t...

Intangible Capitalism: How Accounting Turns Licences Into Assets Capitalism in the twenty-first century runs on intangibles: patents, software code, algorithms, brands. Yet what really matters is not the ideas themselves, but how they are recorded in the books. …

#Intangible #Capitalism: How Accounting Turns Licences Into Assets

democracychallenged.com/2025/09/12/i...

The era of #tax arbitrage has narrowed. #Tariffs and rules of origin are now doing the work of industrial policy. For #Ireland, the challenge is ensuring its #pharma sector remains more than a paper hub in the eyes of both #Washington and the #OECD.

democracychallenged.com/2025/08/29/w...

The age of neoliberal hands-off economics is giving way to state-led tech geopolitics.

Silicon Sovereignty: Industrial Policy and the Post-Neoliberal Turn

democracychallenged.com/2025/08/28/s...

Winner Takes All: How the Top 1% of Firms Capture the Profits The US corporate landscape has morphed into a winner-takes-all economy, where a handful of multinational firms control the lion’s share of profits and market power. The data is stark. Across all US…

Corporate profits in the US are more concentrated than ever.

These figures (see in the blog post) show a structural shift: competition is giving way to #oligopoly #capitalism. What does this mean for policy, #taxation, and #democracy?

democracychallenged.com/2025/07/24/w...

A man presenting to an audience, gesturing as he explains his topic to the engaged group of listeners.

We are delighted to share that @ucdlibrary.bsky.social have ingested a new collection into the Repository - Democracy Challenged, an @erc.europa.eu funded project led by @aidanregan.bsky.social.

Find out more: dri.ie/news/new-col...

New collection in DRI - Democracy Challenged - Digital Repository of Ireland The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is proud to announce the addition of the Democracy Challenged blog series to its ever-growing archive of socially significant collections. This collection, prod...

We are very happy that our project got added to @dri.ie.

Browse our repository here: repository.dri.ie/catalog/0v83...

Read the DRI's post about us: tinyurl.com/3fhs6pwv

The G7’s Corporate Tax Escape Hatch: Fuelling Inequality and Killing Trust in Democracy In June 2025 the G7 quietly unraveled one of the boldest tax reforms ever attempted. The OECD global minimum tax was designed to curb profit shifting. A single clause now exempts United States mult…

The G7’s Corporate Tax Escape Hatch: Fuelling Inequality and Killing Trust in Democracy

democracychallenged.com/2025/07/03/t...

Reminder: Today at 4pm CET (3pm Irish time) @aidanregan.bsky.social will moderate this virtual session for the 2025 @sasemeeting.bsky.social conference.

Venetian Billionaire: How Amazon Built the Empire That Made Jeff Bezos one of World’s Richest Men As the world’s richest guests descend on Venice for Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s lavish wedding, the scene is already drawing protest. And rightly so. Behind the €40 million party, the security …

Jeff #Bezos is throwing a $40M wedding—but the real story is how #Amazon made $3.6T (2014–2024) and paid just 9% U.S. #tax on $197B profit. IP tricks, transfer pricing, and tax laws made him rich - and let him stay that way.

tinyurl.com/yw7f6xef

Tesla’s Tax Machine: How Musk’s Empire Grows While U.S. Revenues Shrink Between 2014 and 2024, Tesla generated more than $34 billion in global pre-tax profit. In most jurisdictions, that would translate into a meaningful tax contribution. In Tesla’s case, it produced a…

Tesla’s Tax Machine: How Musk’s Empire Grows While U.S. Revenues Shrink

democracychallenged.com/2025/06/17/t...

How Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits The Emerald petro-state is riding high off tech and pharma—for now

Recent the @economist.com piece highlights insights from @aidanregan.bsky.social on Ireland's multinational profits vs. real economic activity.

Worth reading both:
Economist article 👉 tinyurl.com/yv9r2wk3
Aidan’s post 👉 tinyurl.com/347b4mhw

The Billion-Dollar Battle Over IP and Tax Power When a U.S. tech giant charges its Irish subsidiary a fee to use pre-existing software, that charge which is called the “buy-in payment” can shape where billions in profits end up,…

The Billion-Dollar Battle Over IP and Tax Power democracychallenged.com/2025/06/13/t...

Save the date! @aidanregan.bsky.social will moderate a round table discussion at this year's @sasemeeting.bsky.social conference. Participation is possible online.

Vanishing Act: Strip Out Pharma and Ireland, and Over 40% of the EU’s U.S. Trade Surplus Disappears The transatlantic trade relationship is often framed in terms of a stark imbalance: in 2024, the European Union ran a €198.2 billion goods trade surplus with the United States. On the surface, this…

Repost due to typo:

The pharma industry is a cornerstone of EU-US trade — and Ireland plays a key role at the heart of it. 🇪🇺🇺🇸💊🇮🇪

Vanishing Act: Strip Out Pharma and Ireland, and Over 40% of the EU’s U.S. Trade Surplus Disappears

democracychallenged.com/2025/05/29/v...

#Trade #Pharma #Ireland

A Primer on Intangible Capital – What’s There to Know? with Aidan Regan In recent weeks, we’ve repeatedly discussed intangible assets and their role in the complex tax strategies of multijurisdictional corporate groups (MJGs). Intangibles were central …

We’ve written a lot about intangible assets in our case studies. Time to step back and ask: what makes intangibles special - and how are they reshaping modern capitalism?

A Primer on Intangible Capital - What’s There to Know?
@linusze.bsky.social

democracychallenged.com/2025/05/26/a...

The Mirage of Substance: The Legal Scaffolding Behind Ireland’s Corporate Tax Boom Since the closure of the Double Irish scheme in 2015, nearly $1 trillion in IP-related assets have been shifted into the Irish subsidiaries of US multinationals. This transfer has driven an extraor…

The Mirage of Substance: The Legal Scaffolding Behind Ireland’s Corporate Tax Boom democracychallenged.com/2025/05/19/t...

Ireland’s Phantom Prosperity: The GDP Mirage and the Real Economy Ireland’s economic success story is, on the surface, dazzling. The country’s GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — reached €510 billion in 2023, making it one of the richest countries i…

Ireland’s Phantom Prosperity: The GDP Mirage and the Real Economy democracychallenged.com/2025/05/14/i...

From Brave New World to Apple vs. Brussels: How Media Fragmentation Shapes Our Reality with Lakshmi Menon and Aidan Regan What happens when one tax ruling sparks six national narratives? From Orwell’s censorship to Huxley’s information overload, Apple’s €13B showdow…

From Brave New World to #Apple vs. #Brussels: How Media Fragmentation Shapes Our Reality

New blog post by Oscar Barrera-Rodríguez, Lakshmi Menon and @aidanregan.bsky.social. They unpack the reactions sparked by last year’s landmark #tax ruling.

democracychallenged.com/2025/05/13/f...

Capital vs. labour: The effect of income sources on attitudes toward the top 1 percent We conduct a randomized online survey to study how information on the share of top earners' income derived from capital and labour affects attitudes t…

Check out the article our team's Oscar Barrera-Rodríguez recently published in the European Journal of Political Economy.

"Capital vs. labour: The effect of income sources on attitudes toward the top 1 percent"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#EJPE #politicaleconomy #inequality

Aidan Regan: The ground is shifting on Ireland’s economic model – it’s time we woke up to the risks

New article by @aidanregan.bsky.social in @businesspost.bsky.social examining Ireland's tax model and the pivotal role of intellectual property in its increasingly precarious economic strategy.

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

Business Post View: Ireland’s time as a sanctum for profit-shifting may be nearing its final act Our GDP, that once-hallowed metric of national wellbeing, has become an absurd fiction—bloated, distorted, and unfit for purpose

11/ 🗞️ Editorial View

“Ireland’s time as a sanctum for profit-shifting may be nearing its final act.”

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

Editor’s note: The Business Post lays bare the full-scale of Ireland’s economic vulnerability Our in-depth investigation exposes in unprecedented detail just how that supercharged-but-fragile economy has been built, the complex financial engineering underpinning it

10/ ✍️ Editor’s Note

Why @businesspost.bsky.social launched this investigation — and what it reveals about Ireland’s dependence on tax arbitrage

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

Aidan Regan: The inside story of how Ireland became Coca-Cola’s multibillion-dollar tax shelter For years, multi-jurisdictional groups have relied on complex international structures to manage their tax obligations

9/🥤 Coca-Cola: A forensic look at Coca-Cola’s €10bn Irish shelter

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

One IP, two balance sheets: How VMware’s Irish engine turns global growth into local losses When the rights to VMware's IP were onshored to Ireland, the income streams had to come with it, with a sharp surge in intangible assets on the company’s balance sheet

8/ 🖥️ VMware Case Study

One IP, two balance sheets: how VMware turned global growth into Irish losses and paid no tax.

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

Ireland’s Tax Mirage: How US tax reform fuelled a corporate tax boom – and why it may not last A combination of Donald Trump’s US tax changes and the ending of the double Irish tax scheme led to a huge Irish tax boom

7/ 🇺🇸 How the end of the Double-Irish and US Tax Reform Fuelled It All — and why it may not last.

www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...

Ireland’s Tax Mirage: How multinationals parked IP in Irish subsidiaries and reaped rewards An investigation by the Business Post and UCD researchers has found a cohort of companies have shifted hundreds of billions of dollars of IP to Ireland

6/ 💡 IP and Ireland

A deep dive into how multinationals parked intellectual property in Irish subsidiaries — and reaped billions.

www.businesspost.ie/news/ireland...

Q&A: The who, what, where and when of Ireland’s tax mirage The key components of the Business Post’s investigation into the tax affairs of multinationals in Ireland explained

5/ ❓ Q&A

Who’s shifting profits? How? Where? And what does it mean for Ireland’s future?

www.businesspost.ie/news/qa-the-...

Methodology: How an unprecedented investigation uncovered Ireland’s Tax Mirage This investigation is based on research from the Democracy Challenged project at University College Dublin (UCD), funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The team is carrying out forensic finan...

4/ 📊 Methodology

How forensic data, academic research, and public records were combined to uncover Ireland’s role in global tax avoidance.

www.businesspost.ie/news/methodo...

Exclusive: Ireland’s $967 billion ‘Tax Mirage’ revealed Business Post Special Investigation finds just 80 firms account for 90 per cent of IP held here in sophisticated tax avoidance scheme

3/ 💥 Ireland’s Tax Mirage

The core exposé: how Ireland became a profit-shifting centre for some of the world’s biggest companies.

www.businesspost.ie/news/ireland...