Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
“Mark and his family are excited to continue caring for this historic home and look forward to spending time in Ireland, where Meta maintains its international headquarters,” a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The price paid in the off-market deal is not known but the Irish Times, which first reported the sale, estimated a value between €20m (£17m) and €30m: approximately 10% of the cost of his 387ft superyacht.
i presume this is for tax dodging?
Don’t give them so much credit, might turn out to be a very stupid idea like maybe he imagines they can survive in a castle out in the wilderness during an apocalypse.
They have fabs on ireland
… dodging taxes.
Well it’s not the same as like keeping your residence in Monaco by being there just over 180 days a year to pay 0% income tax or something, Ireland still has tax. They just have lower tax because that gets them more tax income as it’s beneficial to have your EU or even international HQ in Ireland.
Tax optimization is a better term, because tax avoidance or dodging usually implies doing something illegal whereas Meta quite literally does have a physical HQ in Ireland.
Also in Ireland they have to pay every year they make profit as far as I know, whereas in Estonia for example they’d only have to pay tax on dividends and salaries, not profits. Meta pays a really tiny dividend so they’d essentially go untaxed on corporate income. Catch is, if they eventually DO want to pay a large dividend, they’d be paying the 22/78 income tax here (it’s called 22%, but since it’s 22% of the gross, but calculated on the net, it’s actually 28% or something, I don’t wanna math right now).
Point being, they’re actually still paying a lot more tax than they could legally be paying, while still staying in the EU.