CPDStore Ireland

In this session, John Murphy reviews topical tax items which are relevant to almost all practices in Ireland and some common errors or issues noticed from our work with accountants during the past year, including:

•  The interaction of capital losses with retirement relief provisions
• Principal private residence relief – do not forget the development exception, unusual results where transfers between spouses, and what happens where losses arise
• Application of loans between companies with common directors and the application of the close company provision – A regular question into us
• Given the uncertain times for some companies regarding insolvency, we will do a recap on anti-avoidance legislation with regard to the conversion of loans to share capital in the hope of creating capital losses. 
• A useful piece of legislation to allow companies to pay pre-requisites on the directors/shareholders behalf which results in a better effective rate of tax than paying a salary to cover certain expenses
• Termination payments – where a person controls a number of companies – what to watch
• In the current environment – the importance of keeping PAYE liabilities up to date – Section 997A and the ability to unravel the veil of incorporation
• The importance of meeting return filing dates for making certain elections – missing them even where no liability to tax arises can be detrimental and result in claims from clients. We will identify some of the more common reliefs that require an election within a short time period after the return has been filed.
• Some recent tax appeal determinations which have application for all practitioners:

• The bona-fide commercial reasons – the importance of having these – even before looking at the specific anti-avoidance rules when looking to attract various reliefs such as retirement relief, revised entrepreneurial relief among others
• The importance of clients understanding what is being said to Revenue could come back to bite them
• Tax advice is all well and good – the importance of implementing the advice that is important
• Maintenance payments a regular at the tax appeals process
• Agriculture – level of proof to claim favourite niece/nephew; the 80% farmer test and interest in expectancy.
• Work done by Company and land owned by the shareholders = the distribution/BIK risks that cannot be ignored.