Ireland proves lower corporate taxes lead to bankrupt governments

Via NPR:

Wage taxes, too, have long been much lower than in other European countries, says Fintan O'Toole, a columnist for The Irish Times and the author of Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.

"If you were working in Ireland, well, very large numbers of people were kept out of the tax net altogether," O'Toole says. Many middle-class people paid no taxes either, he says.

But the economic collapse of the past few years — unemployment has gone from 4.5 percent to more than 13 percent — has exposed the downside of Ireland's low-tax policies, and forced it to backtrack somewhat, he says.