Well some of us were up late last night and mad enough to try live blogging the first presidential election debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.

You’ll see the live blogging between myself and Alexia below. Alexia bravely stayed up for the whole thing. But we both were very much awake when John McCain mentioned the Irish Corporate Tax Rate.

He was at an Irish American Event earlier this week and said something about our tax system before and I saw commentary on Irish tax rates pop up everywhere with all sorts of figures and none of them right so when he started off again my ears pricked up. (The Transcript of the debate is available here.)

MCCAIN: Well — well, let me give you an example of what Senator Obama finds objectionable, the business tax.

Right now, the United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent.

Now, if you’re a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it’s 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you’re going to be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, et cetera.

I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in — in the United States of America and create jobs.

As the IDA, Wikipedia, KPMG et al tell us – our rate is 12.5% or 25 per cent for passive income. The low low rate of 10 is for some software and financial companies located in a tiny part of Dublin until 2010. Luke and P. O’Neill also picked this up. I’m sure the US blogosphere and MSM have by now picked this up in the fact check that happens post debate. Haven’t they?

And no doubt Irish bloggers will step up to the plate on the matter of the impact of our corporate tax rate (The very short version – how we’ve been a tax haven for American, UK and other international companies for years – with small corporate headquarters all over the city passing millions through their books. )