DUBLIN: Convenience food giant Greencore, which generated €1.6 billion in sales last year, pays an effective tax rate in Ireland of just 1 per cent. The UK-listed, Irish domiciled company uses “deferred tax assets” acquired through its takeover of UK rival Uniq to reduce its liability here. It bought Uniq for £113 million in 2011 in a deficit-for-equity swap deal, which saw Uniq’s pension scheme escape a deficit of about £430 million in exchange for taking equity in the business.
On foot of tax credits and allowances stemming from historic losses at Uniq, Greencore’s Irish corporate tax bill of £5.5 million last year ended up as a tax credit of £4.2 million.
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“When we bought the Uniq business in the UK four years ago,m there were a load of unused tax losses and capital allowances and we’re simply working our way through those,” Greencore chief executive Patrick Coveney told The Irish Times.
He said the company had used about a third of the tax attributes in its UK subsidiary so far, suggesting it was likely to benefit from a low tax rate for some time to come.
