The Irish Times TOP 1000 is the definitive database of Ireland’s leading companies. CRH took the top spot, with Medtronic coming in a close second.
CRH had a global turnover of €27 billion, in addition to a massive €700 jump in profits.
Medtronic’s global turnover was €26 billion in the year to April 2017. Other high performers include Google, which moved up to third place; Microsoft came fourth; and Oracle jumped two places to edge into the Top 10.
Medtronic is Ireland’s most profitable company. Medtronic added almost €300 million to its profits in 2017. However, the company generates the majority of its profits from its global business.
Irish companies with impressive profits include Smurfit Kappa with €654 million, the Kerry Group at €611 million and €314 million for Kingspan.
Ireland’s top companies increased their net profits to €34 billion since 2016. That is up from €28 billion in 2016 and €22.4 billion in 2015.
However, the true amount is likely to be higher. Global behemoths such as Apple, Penneys, IBM and Intel do not report financial figures for their Irish operations. As a result, the profit figure is likely to be considerably higher.
Medtronic is Ireland’s most profitable company as well as our biggest taxpayer. The company has a tax bill of €518 million for 2017 – about 13 percent.
TOP 1000 winner CRH paid an effective rate of 27 percent tax. The company racked up a bill of €471 million last year.
Smurfit Kappa pays one of the highest tax rates at 30 percent. Their tax bill was €196 million of tax on earnings of €654 million.
The tax rate can change, paying tax at a higher rate in one year, and a lower rate the next. As a result, companies do not always pay the corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent.
