- cross-posted to:
- ireland@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- ireland@lemmy.world
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.
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Reminder that $30m is $0.0bn, to the nearest tenth of a billion dollars. Billionaires should not exist.
I thought that the Irish were traditionally not to keen on foreign assholes coming over and taking their stuff?
Rosie O’Donnell just can’t get away from this american largesse.
One notes the absence of a goddamned data center on the property. Good enough for American backyards, not good enough for him.
May it be a curse to him.
Technofeudalism needs castles for the tech-barons.
I really wish Ireland would stop hosting Zuckerberg’s scammy ad company and all the other useless parasite corporations that hole up there.
Then Ireland fucking dies.
People really do not understand without Irrland being a tax heaven, there is no money in that country.
There’s handful of decent jobs in Ireland because of it, other than that, people have no future and are forever riding on benefits. I know enough people who basically haven’t held a job in 25 years. While the state shouldn’t let people starve, they did get complicit and simply gave up.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for saying it here, lemmy loves to think everyone gets to just do nothing and get money for existing… but reality is, Ireland is fucked. Has been fucked for 20 years. They spiralled into one of the most expensive places to live with no prospects, people can’t afford to start new businesses so there’s less jobs going around. All the talent fucks off to UK (guess where I am?) Because we as a couple + an extra person couldn’t find a place to rent after 3 months of searching. People drop year’s worth of rent day 1 to secure a place (it doesn’t sound like this has changed much) so we moved.
I miss home, but I’d seriously have to downgrade our lives to move back. I couldn’t even dream to be able to do single income and maintain family of 3 in Ireland, even in my high paying field.
That is an exaggeration. While I can’t comment on housing the economy is built on being a tax haven but isn’t just that. There is a lot of employment in IT and Biotech and there are a lot of facilities actually based in Ireland, not just some office jobs for handling the tax evasion (that too of course).
The problem to me doesn’t seem that long term unemployed aren’t left to starve and die but a wrong housing policy and not even a joke of urban planning. It is what is happening when exploding real estate value is considerey a boon rather than a huge issue.
Those IT jobs are being culled now. There were news of Rapid7 closing down their Dublin office few weeks ago.
Intel has still decent presence, but without investment into infrastructure, where does that leave us? Not everyone can (nor should) work in IT or biotech.
How do you compete with mainland Europe when you got to ship things likely through UK and then to mainland while having one of the highest tax rates and wages in EU? Ireland hasn’t got any benefits in manufacturing. There’s only so much Irish beef and salmon you can sell to fuel the economy.
As far as I know logistic lines have adapted post Brexit and are avoiding the UK nowaday, stuff doesn’t have to leave the Single Market on the way to other parts of it. Ireland may be on the edge of the continent bit I wouldn’t call it remote. It is as close to the “Blue Banana” as Central Europe for example.
Correct me if I am wrong but the IT cuts are not limited to Ireland but happening globally in the sector, partially due to over expansion during covid and thecurrent AI bubble.
Yeah, I absolutely understand that there are real reasons to why Ireland has become a tax haven, and thanks for adding some background here. Of course what I’m saying is that I wish Ireland would find a way to prosper without them, not that it should just kick them out and then roll over and die.
I touched on this more in my other comment, Ireland has too many disadvantages to prosper. Mainland Europe has cheaper labour, doesn’t got to cross the Irish sea then the English channel to get goods in and with tax rates this high? Not much left on the table.
I do feel like there’s no “out” in this.
Why is housing expensive while job opportunities are low? Is it only true for cities like Dublin or generally true?
It became the whole, you can still commute to Dublin, so prices krept outwards.
The number of houses was very low, 2008 killed a lot of these housing plans and they never really restarted. Houses kept going up and up due to lack of supply. 3 generations living under the same roof is common.
But even places like Cork or Limerick have seen a big raise in price. Remote work or even hybrid allowed people to go further and prices obviously followed…
I wonder how constrained he will be by planning laws.
This is such a stupid life.
They will not be “caring for” the property, nor anything else. Let’s be honest
Epstein Castle, opening soon.
I sincerely wish Mark the best of luck for his new home. I hope he spends ten, nay, hundred times as much as he paid for it, on renovating the place and making it fit for him. I hope he truly spends every dime to make this place fit for a modern king.
And then I hope he doesn’t get to live in it for a single day.
Ah yes, the story of Saint Michael’s Castle.
I hope he escapes to it when the revolution kicks off, only to find the revolution is in Ireland too, and be gets hung at the doorstep.
Ahh, who am I kidding. Ireland might do it, but he’d never escape there because Americans will never revolt, they’ll just elect a bunch of people who claim to be progressive and end up with the same exact party as before while patting themselves on the back.
Plus he already has a bunker in his island in Hawaii, this Ireland castle is really only for holidays
Fuck that guy
Mark Zuckerberg is a life support system for cringe.
He’s a monument of vaginal dryness
Fun fact: Cromwell died from a mosquito bite during one of his campaigns in Ireland.
Dear Mosquitos, you know what to do.
Mosquitos don’t suck android fluid though.
Time for a siege!
finally
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.
