MICHAEL NOONAN has said a United States Senate report into Ireland’s corporate tax – and how the Irish taxation system is used by companies like Apple – is “misleading”.

The finance minister says claims that Ireland has an effective 2 per cent rate of tax for Apple is based on a flawed premise, and again insisted that Ireland does not negotiate with individual companies to decide how much tax they should pay.

Noonan told the Dáil this evening that the ’2 per cent’ rate was calculated by taking Apple’s Irish tax bill as a percentage of its total global profits – and therefore wrongly claimed that Ireland could tax all of Apple’s profits worldwide.

“Companies that are not tax resident in Ireland are no more chargeable… than in the United States,” Noonan said.

“It is clearly wrong and misleading to attribute this tax of tax to Ireland.”

The minister told Labour backbenchers Ann Phelan and Robert Dowds that tax avoidance by international companies was a concern, however, and that governments around the world were “now taking coordinated actions to ensure that corporations pay their fair share of tax”.

Dowds called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who will be attending next month’s G8 summit in Fermanagh as Ireland holds the EU Presidency, to ensure that an international campaign against tax avoidance was discussed at the summit.

Read: Leaders back EU’s plan to attack ‘tax planning’ by the end of 2013