Investing directly in stocks does currently involve less tax exposure but the risk for your money is far higher. Whatever else can be said about the Irish tax regime around investing, it is certainly neither consistent nor intuitive. Even if all those companies were still on the Dublin exchange, Dublin would be a tiny dot on the stock market landscape. For every Nvidia, Apple or Microsoft, there are many turkeys such as, in the Irish market context, Datalex. Changing to funds will alter the tax rules but, even with that, you would expect better returns than you’re seeing now.
