Farms on the Irish border ‘may not have to pay tax after Brexit’
FARMS AND small businesses that straddle the Irish border could be given tax-free status to maintain a “soft” frontier.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said “quite large exemptions” could be granted to businesses that are not given authorised economic operator status – “trusted traders” – to enable trade to continue between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
In an interview with Gerard Baker, editor in chief of the
at WSJ CEO Council Europe in central London, Mr Davis was asked how he would avoid a hard Irish border.
He replied: “There’s a tax border between the North and South, there’s an excise border, there’s a currency border. There is, in effect, no personnel border because of the Common Travel Area. The Common Travel Area was created in 1923, it’s been there all the time, it’s not going to go.
“So what we’re talking about is, number one, how we continue to maintain a tax border – bear in mind we’re looking for a zero-tariff outcome – a tax border and an excise border and so on, much as we do now.”
Mr Davis said one “area of difficulty” was “very small businesses” straddling the border, such as farms and “tiny” companies.
“That is going to have to be addressed, we think, in the first case by quite large exemptions, so in effect we will give them taxfree status.”
Germany gave its full support to Ireland’s insistence that the Brexit treaty includes a backstop of regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU to preserve the island’s open border.
Germany’s new federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made the pledge as he met Irish deputy premier Simon Coveney in Dublin.
The Minister said Germans understood the emotional sensitivities around the border, given his country’s own experience of division.
“I do understand the need that we do whatever we can in order to avoid a flaring-up of a historic conflict,” he said.
“We have to do everything we can to avoid the glimmer of seeing something like a hard border become reality.”
Mr Coveney said it was “very reassuring”and that the backstop was a “fallback” option.