JOHN FITZGERALD

McInerney Saunders

Tax Partner McInerney Saunders

OPERATIONS Certain departments within the firm continue to work remotely while the rest of the practice is currently operating on a hybrid model. There are a lot of deadlines to be met between September and December, and in the absence of any extensions from Revenue, having the team together in the office will certainly help get through this busy period.

TAX ISSUES Trading with the UK has been tricky post-Brexit in terms of administration and logistics, but I get a sense that the supply chain might be becoming a little smoother. I don’t think we’re at the end of the Brexit road yet, as costs have increased significantly, particularly shipping costs. There appears to be a good uptake on OSS/IOSS schemes since their introduction on 1 July 2021. These should hopefully simplify VAT on cross-border B2C supplies, either intra-EU or direct from UK-EU.

TAX INCENTIVES There has been some enhancements to EIIS in recent years to simplify the process, and we hope that will continue. In addition, we would urge the Minister for Finance to focus on reforming and enhancing the KEEP scheme. Issues that need to be addressed include the uncertainty of Revenue accepting share valuations; the challenge of SMEs providing liquidity for employee shares; redefining conditions relating to the qualifying individual; and broadening access to the scheme to take account of common group structures.

ENTREPRENEUR RELIEF There should be some practical changes to the operation of the relief such as possibly removing or amending the requirement to own at least 5% of the company; allowing the relief where there is a dormant company within a corporate group; extending the relief to external investors; and separating the lifetime limit from other CGT reliefs such as Retirement Relief.

Business owners generally put their retirement planning on the long finger, and as a result valuable tax reliefs could be lost if good advice is not taken in time – due to the various qualifying conditions that need to be met.

‘Valuable tax reliefs could be lost if timely advice is not taken’