Originally posted on Business Post 20 June 2021. Given Ireland’s pandemic-related national debt, significant income tax cuts in the near future seem unlikely, but moving abroad to work remotely will not always result in savings either. As if it wasn't enough to have ongoing upheaval over corporation tax, events are now conspiring to push the income tax burden into the spotlight. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has been warning that Ireland's personal tax rates are a major disincentive for attracting mobile workers. Highly paid workers, he believes, could avail of new remote working possibilities to move overseas. Any government minister should be wary of losing high-paid executives from this economy. Broadly speaking, Ireland operates the 80/20 rule when it comes to tax receipts from individuals – roughly 80 per cent of income tax is paid by the top 20 per cent of earners. In common with some other countries, Ireland has tax measures for foreign executives coming in on assignment. A special assignee relief programme, or SARP, allows people coming into this country to have part of their income ignored for tax purposes, provided certain terms and conditions are met. Numbers in the public domain suggest that just under 600 jobs were eligible for SARP in 2018. Given that there were some 2.7 million employees in the country before the pandemic hit in early 2020, SARP doesn’t appear to be making a huge difference either to overall employment, or to the overall tax take. Whatever about coming in, what about people who might leave the country because of the increased acceptability of remote working? Every other day, companies are announcing policies to permit their workers to work remotely from their homes for a proportion of the working week or working month. It's not clear, however, that this will translate to a mass exodus of largely white-collar, higher-paid workers from the jurisdiction. Except for company directors, who are always caught by the Irish tax system irrespective of where they live, taxing rights are usually determined by the employee’s place of residence rather than their place of employment. A worker in Mullingar who emigrates to Marseille, while still working remotely for their Westmeath employer, will be subject to French income tax and not Irish income tax on the earnings. The position of social welfare contributions (PRSI) and the corresponding entitlements is not as clear cut as that of income tax and may differ from country to country. The position also gets tricky if the work involves travel to meet clients, customers or suppliers. Tax-free reimbursement of travel expenses in Ireland is only permissible where the travel is from the normal place of work, which can become problematic for remote workers, even within the jurisdiction. Moving abroad will not always achieve tax savings. An OECD study of the income tax and social security paid by single workers on the average wage in 2020 shows that the tax take in Ireland is more or less in the middle ground by international standards. A person moving from Ireland to Germany or Belgium or Austria will have a lot less after-tax income to spend than if they had stayed put. The difference is mainly due to social security contributions. That person might fare better by moving to Australia or Britain or Canada, but only marginally so. Higher-paid workers may do better than their counterparts on average pay, but few territories offer workers a tax crock of gold. Any telecommuting move, of course, depends on a willing employer. A recently published study from the University of Chicago, analysing personnel and analytics data on professionals in the IT industry, found evidence that while the total hours worked by people working from home did increase, the average output did not significantly change. Not only that, time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased. In short, there seems to have been more management, but less productivity. It is unlikely that company employment and benefits policies will require significant adjustments if a person is to work three days from the house and two days from the office. However, if the person wants to move to another jurisdiction entirely, the chore of administering that employee’s insurance, terms and conditions becomes far more onerous and perhaps without much commercial benefit to show for it. There undoubtedly will be even more studies on the benefits or otherwise of telecommuting, but the University of Chicago findings will resonate with many people who have been involved in telecommuting since the start of the pandemic lockdowns. Part-time telecommuting opportunities may become a part of an employee benefit package, but it doesn't necessarily follow that those opportunities will routinely extend to permitting employees to work offshore. The pandemic has resulted in higher national debt and a bigger state apparatus to pay for. The pressure on taxes generally, and on social security contributions particularly, will increase if government finances are to recover. If corporation tax receipts are indeed under threat – though I suspect that the €2 billion plus estimates may be overstated – it will be difficult on purely budgetary grounds to make a strong case for income tax cuts as well. The threat of income tax loss from offshore working may also, I suspect, be overstated. While the grass may be greener, the tax benefits of offshore working are not black and white. Originally posted on Business Post 13 June 2021.   Dr Brian Keegan is Director of Public Policy at Chartered Accountants Ireland

  Originally posted on Business Post 13 June 2021. Corporation tax might be dominating the headlines now, but environmental matters are of more long-term importance to international finance. Ideas for what constitutes sustainable behaviour change over time too. Over a decade ago, motor tax on diesel cars was reduced here to reflect lower greenhouse gas emissions From the headlines you could be forgiven for thinking that the G7 finance ministers discussed nothing but multinational corporation tax last week. Accounting standards rarely deserve such coverage, but the G7 statements about how businesses should account for their environmental behaviour will have repercussions long after the tumult over tax has subsided. The fundamental issue considered by the G7 finance ministers is that there is no universally accepted standard to measure claims by a business that it is conducting itself in a sustainable way. Misleading impressions are getting created. When it comes to food, for example, there is much talk about the environmental impact of shipping produce from far afield. Yet, as the chief executive of Bord Bia pointed out last week, transport accounts for only about 3 per cent of the carbon footprint of Irish produce. This figure is undoubtedly valid, but without agreed standards, her counterpart in another country may be doing the same calculation a different way and getting a different result. Ideas for what constitutes sustainable behaviour change over time too. Over a decade ago, motor tax on diesel cars was reduced here to reflect lower greenhouse gas emissions. Now there is a pushback from some quarters on the role of diesel cars on the grounds of high particulate emission. If all this confusion makes sustainable consumption choices difficult for the consumer, the problems are even greater for fund managers looking to make planet-friendly returns on behalf of the individuals, unit trusts and pension funds for whom they act. These investment choices are really what prompts the G7 concerns over the lack of generally recognised accounting standards. The idea of obliging companies to report on their sustainability agenda activity is not new. Since 2014, an EU directive on non-financial reporting has required large businesses to report not only on their financial results, but also on things like their approach to human rights, steps to take against corruption and their promotion of diversity in the workforce. It is estimated that perhaps 20,000 companies across Europe have been including this material in their published reports and accounts, some of whom volunteer to do so. The system is not without its drawbacks. It is only a legal requirement for the very largest businesses and it allows companies to choose whatever reporting standards they feel appropriate. This makes it difficult to form objective comparisons between companies. Nevertheless, the directive has promoted the key idea that sustainability reporting needs to be seen in two ways. First it has to show how sustainable conduct contributed to the value of the business – the euros on the balance sheet. Then it has to show what impact the company’s performance has on the broader environment. This idea is known as “double materiality” in the jargon. Persisting with the notion of double materiality will be crucial to any fair measurement of a business in terms of its environmental impact. There are already at least five voluntary consortiums involved in devising reporting standards and the EU now wants to establish yet another standard for itself. The G7, however, seem to be saying that the work should be given to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation, the organisation which sets the existing accounting standards to calculate profits, losses and balance sheet values. That approach seems logical, but it is also problematic. The IFRS Foundation will have to develop expertise in sustainability matters. It took well over a decade to devise the current financial reporting regime, but that kind of timeframe surely cannot be repeated if proper sustainability reporting is to be part of a meaningful response to the climate change crisis. These initiatives will affect more than just large multinationals. To be credible, larger entities will have to be able to show that their supply chain also operates with good sustainability credentials. That in turn means that smaller enterprises will have to develop similar credentials to secure their position in supply chains, even if they are exempt from formal reporting themselves. All this will come at a cost. Currently, the relatively modest requirements of the EU non-financial reporting directive drive average costs per company of some €150,000 a year. While such costs would be only a tiny fraction of the total operating costs of a large manufacturer or insurer, they are certain to become proportionately higher as the reporting requirement increases. In addition, there will be training costs for staff, and new systems to be implemented. It's one thing to meter the number of items processed on a production line, but quite another to meter, for instance, the energy consumption per item. The piece missing from the G7 approach is that it is all very well for them to mandate more regulatory change cross their own industries in their own territories, but climate change is a global problem. Regulatory compliance is not always a top priority in every country across the world. The current tax proposals have teeth because the US is threatening to discriminate against countries that don’t apply the proposed 15 per cent minimum rate. There will have to be similar sanctions for countries where their major industries do not have to account for what they are doing to the planet.   Dr Brian Keegan is Director of Public Policy at Chartered Accountants Ireland

  Originally posted on Business Post 6 June 2021. Vat is to all intents and purposes invisible, although for many of us it eats into our disposable income to a much greater extent even than income tax.  On a day when they announced business supports to the value of hundreds of millions of euro, it must have been profoundly irritating for government ministers to see the relatively minor increases in local property tax grab the lion’s share of the headlines. The employer wage subsidy scheme alone has cost the state almost €4 billion to date, and is now being extended to the end of this year. In comparison, LPT has never raised more than around €500 million a year and, even with the projected changes, is unlikely to raise significantly more than that in the future. Yet it is the LPT change that gets the attention. Another tax hike announced last week isn’t getting nearly the same coverage. The Revenue Commissioners have announced that, with effect from July 1 next, they will apply the full rigours of the EU Vat regime to online purchases from non-EU countries. Unlike the revamp of LPT, the change has been met with a national shrug of the shoulders. Like customs duties, excise and carbon taxes, Vat is to all intents and purposes invisible, although for many of us it eats into our disposable income to a much greater extent even than income tax. It adds to the cost of our purchases as consumers, and there is no way to avoid or circumvent it. A Vat rate of 23 per cent applies to many of the goods which make life more enjoyable – cars, most clothes, cosmetics, electronic gadgets of all sorts and white goods. Any consumer buying these types of goods online from outside the EU is not charged Vat if the individual item costs less than €22. From July 1, that practice will cease including for some items which attract lower Vat rates. This may not seem like a big change in the overall scheme of things because the €22 threshold is fairly low. Nevertheless, removing the exemption reinforces the notion that you're always better off dealing with an EU business. Any possible tax saving by shopping online further afield is removed, but the bonus of better regulation and consumer protection when dealing with an EU based supplier remains. Aside from reducing paperwork, it makes little sense to have any form of preference for non-EU suppliers over domestic or EU suppliers, particularly as we exit from the pandemic. Irish business needs every competitive advantage it can secure. Will there be any pushback to this change? Given the increasingly febrile nature of the relationship between Britain and the rest of the EU, this move could well be seen as another gesture by the EU against a post-Brexit Britain by applying Vat charges to Irish consumers buying from British websites. Unfortunately, a fundamental dishonesty, similar to that seen in the 2016 Brexit campaign, is creeping back into the post-Brexit discourse. Edwin Poots, the new DUP leader, has already claimed that the EU is seeking to punish Britain in its application of the Northern Ireland protocol. That view is overly simplistic because it reflects only the commercial disruption created but not the commercial advantages conferred by the protocol. The EU’s ambassador to Britain last week retorted that Brexit, not the protocol, created the problem but that too is overly simplistic. Having managed to control the Brexit negotiation process for so long, the EU allowed itself to be bounced into enforcing impractical arrangements on Christmas Eve last year. The single market would not have been particularly compromised by allowing a further period of trial on new controls and procedures on imports and exports between Britain and the North beyond the Brexit guillotine date of January 1 last. The irony is that this Vat change doesn’t change the treatment of consumer purchases from the North because the North was part of, and remains part of, the EU Vat system for goods. Nor is Britain being singled out by the change, because it applies to purchases from any non-EU country. This is what you would expect, as the EU policy was devised when Britain was still at the table in Brussels. Both the Vat changes and the LPT changes announced last week underline that when it comes to taxes we generally respond primarily by reference to what we last experienced. Consumer reaction to a Vat change is usually a shrug of the shoulders, because the prices of consumer items go up and down all the time and consumers will be indifferent to the Brexit implications. Similarly, our reaction to the LPT change is being informed by the lower amount, or the zero amount, we paid last year. It doesn’t seem to matter that the LPT system as it currently operates works from an out-of-date property register, nor that some measures to raise taxes are inevitable because of the costs of extending the pandemic supports to citizens and businesses. We shouldn’t be surprised if the government is frustrated by the response to the Economic Recovery Plan. Taxation is always a stone in the political shoe. Dr Brian Keegan is Director of Public Policy at Chartered Accountants Ireland

  Originally posted on Business Post 30 May 2021. There are important tax implications for employers as they prepare for the winding-down of the pandemic supports.   ‘The caveats associated with the withdrawal of government pandemic supports should not diminish the air of excitement about the prospect of the return to normal business.’ Almost every sector of the economy has benefited from a tax system which, more than a year ago, was thrown into reverse to distribute financial support during the pandemic closures. While there is much talk about the “new normal”, elements of the old normal are going to return. The Revenue Commissioners will soon cease adhering to the belief that it is better to give than to receive. There are of course many issues that businesses which are reopening have to deal with – stocking, premises, staffing, health and safety, debtors, creditors and banking arrangements. As well as these, there are consequences as the government pandemic supports come to an end. Pandemic supports have created three categories to think about. Employees who had to be laid off entirely were more than likely receiving Pandemic Unemployment Payments (PUP) of up to €350 a week. It is up to the employee to notify the Department of Social Protection that they have returned to the workforce. Employers need to be aware that the employee’s tax credits could have been restricted earlier in the year to account for income tax due on the PUP, and the employee might not get into their hand as much as they expected after PAYE. Employees who were on the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS), which was the first wage subsidy from April of last year, may also have less after-tax income than they expect. This is because of the way the TWSS operated – not all the tax due was gathered through payroll. Workers have an opportunity to spread whatever back taxes from 2020 are due out over the next four years. There is also an option for an employer, should they wish, to settle their employees’ tax liability without further tax consequences either for themselves or the employee. This option runs out in September 2021. In the third category, employees who are on the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) will not have a back tax issue. EWSS replaced the TWSS and has operated since last September. The scheme allows employers and new firms where turnover has fallen by 30 per cent to get a flat-rate subsidy per week based on the number of qualifying employees on the payroll, including seasonal staff and new employees. Eligibility for the EWSS may continue for the next few weeks even though a business is reopening, provided the reduced turnover criterion for the business remains valid. There are signals that, for some sectors at least, the EWSS could be extended beyond the June 30, 2021 deadline. If the experience in Britain, which is reopening a few weeks ahead of us, is anything to go by, many of the businesses commencing or extending trading again will experience a surge in demand, and a parallel need to enhance conditions or provide more flexible arrangements to attract or retain staff. The tax system remains notoriously inflexible when it comes to staff arrangements. It is almost impossible to broker arrangements whereby current or former employees can be treated as self-employed contractors for part or all of the time they work. It is possible to provide equipment to staff if they can work from home, but the reimbursement of working from home expenses without operating PAYE is limited to €3.20 per day. The consequences of getting employment status or expenses reimbursement wrong almost always land on the doorstep of the employer. One of the better pandemic relief measures for businesses was the strategy of allowing them not to pay over Vat, PAYE and direct taxes as they fell due, but defer them into a “debt warehouse”. Businesses which were affected by the first lockdown last year and which entered the debt warehousing scheme will find that interest will start to be charged on the unpaid tax at a rate of 3 per cent from September 1 next. There is room in the law as currently drafted to extend that September 2021 deadline to December 2022, which would be a great help. For now, if that tax is owing, businesses should budget for interest charges from September next. There is a particular wrinkle on tax debt warehousing for proprietary directors. Even though the PAYE on the income of proprietary directors may have been warehoused by the company, the director will not receive credit for warehoused PAYE on their own tax returns and will have to make a separate application for tax debt warehousing in their personal capacity. The Covid Restrictions Support Scheme (CRSS) was offered to businesses which had to prohibit or restrict customers from entering the business premises. CRSS is worthwhile, with a maximum weekly payment of up to €5,000. There is an arrangement called the restart week, which means that a business can claim double “restart week” payments for a period of two weeks on reopening. While CRSS does not need to be refunded directly, CRSS claims can add to tax liabilities in future years. There was also a waiver of commercial rates for businesses which were forced to close over the lockdown. That waiver expires at the end of June. The caveats associated with the withdrawal of government pandemic supports should not diminish the air of excitement about the prospect of the return to normal business. Last Friday’s announcements concerning the hospitality, travel and events sectors signal what is permissible, even though they are not a guarantee of what is possible. In the rush to get back to normal, it is worth remembering that the state is as anxious for businesses to reopen as the businesses themselves are. The pandemic supports can’t be paid for ever. Dr Brian Keegan is Director of Public Policy at Chartered Accountants Ireland

  Originally posted on Business Post 23 May 2021. The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base is getting a new title— Befit. But a lack of real change suggests a naïveté and mission creep on the part of the European Commission There can only be two motives for tax. The first and most obvious is fiscal, the second is purely political The word “fair” was on almost every page of the short European Commission communication to its political masters last week. Modestly titled Business Taxation for the 21st Century, it sets out the Commission’s current policy on company tax issues. Unlike regulations or directives, which have legal and binding effect, a communication ranks fairly low in the hierarchy of EU pronouncements. But it is rash to overlook them, because they often serve as harbingers of future mischief coming down the tracks from Brussels. There can be really only two motives for having a tax policy. The first and most obvious is fiscal – the necessity to raise taxes to pay for government and its services. The other motive is purely political. Such tax policies are intended to drive behaviours, or at least to signal official concerns at emerging behaviours in an economy. Last week’s imposition of a 10 per cent stamp duty rate on houses purchased by investment funds is a good example. The new levy won't raise a lot of additional money for the exchequer. It is noticeable that the additional amount that might be collected has been largely absent in the debates. The EU itself will have a pressing need for additional taxes in the coming years as the costs of the pandemic response programmes, funded by Brussels, come home to roost. At the moment, EU costs are mainly met by direct national contributions along with elements of customs and Vat, but that is likely to change. While ideas on how to do this are touched upon in the document, EU funding is not its main focus. Rather, the emphasis is on ensuring that member countries play fair with their business taxes. The political motive for raising taxes is sometimes used to cloak a more unpalatable fiscal motive. This is true of recent US tax announcements for their multinationals. It's appealing to American voters to promise to raise taxes to ensure companies pay a fair share, but the real drivers are the multitrillion-dollar investment and recovery programmes planned by the Biden administration. It's hard to know if the Commission document is genuinely about using taxation as a lever for economic reform, or merely about taking in more money. The question might be easier to answer if there was any new thinking evident in the Commission’s proposals. In fact there is not. It notes that it is following the OECD agenda on corporate tax reform, but that has long been the case. The ideas for a revised approach to calculating corporate profitability across the 27 member countries are not original either. A project to do that called the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base has existed for more than 20 years. Now it will have a catchier title – Befit (Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation). A name-change doesn't necessarily make something work better, however. This name-change is illustrative of a curious air of naïveté about the whole process. The Commission’s thinking feels like a textbook economic exercise which doesn't recognise either commercial realities or the different needs of its member countries. It may well have a point when it says it wants to migrate the corporate tax system to favour equity funding rather than loan funding, but it is the market that has prioritised loan funding over equity funding, not the tax system. The emphasis on formulaic approaches to calculating the distribution of corporate profits across the single market is not realistic, given the disparity of economic requirements across the European Union. For instance, the economy of Malta is radically different to the economy of Germany. How can a single apportionment formula work across such differences and offer a fair result? As the Commission points out, such apportionment methods are used in the US to help determine taxability between states, but the US is a country. It is not an economic bloc. When it comes to taxation policy, the Commission appears to be looking in the wrong direction and succumbing to mission creep. It should be focusing on what it can control rather than what it clearly wants to control. Both customs policy and Vat policy are entirely within the control of the EU institutions. Europe's external trade policy is controlled by customs and Vat. Trade policy is at least as important as an internal policy on company taxation, yet external trade does not feature in a communication purportedly about business taxation for the 21st century. Maybe external trade does not fit in with the Commission's vision of what needs to be fair. The communication bemoans that only 7 per cent of taxes collected in the EU come through corporation tax. It’s a complaint that rings hollow for a country like ours, where the corporation tax contribution to the total tax take is closer to 20 per cent, with a tax regime that underpins our employment and industrial strategy. Maybe this too is unfair in the Commission’s eyes? Beware of anyone who promotes fair taxation. Ultimately, it might be you they are after.   Dr Brian Keegan is Director of Public Policy at Chartered Accountants Ireland

The response is based on the feedback provided by members in a survey conducted in February and March 2021 where our members raised concerns about the sustainability of the current State Pension, and the requirement for clear and coherent government pensions strategy with adequate lead-in time for any changes to allow workers to plan for the long-term.  The Institute’s response focused on 4 key areas:  The Government must set out a clear, consistent long-term strategy, particularly in terms of future State Pension Age increases, and any significant changes should be communicated 10 years in advance. Reform to the State Pension Age cannot take place without commitment and action to increase private pension coverage. Automatic enrolment should be introduced in Ireland for private sector workers. Mandatory retirement in employment contracts should be abolished to afford workers the choice to work or retire. The Benefit Payment for 65-year-olds should continue for those retiring at 65 years of age until they reach State Pension Age. The four-week public consultation process  was launched in February to examine how Ireland's State Pension system can be funded in the future on a fiscally and socially sustainable basis. We would like to thank those who contributed to the survey and for comments provided by members. The Pensions Commission is due to report on its work, findings, options and recommendations to the Government by 30 June 2021. We will keep readers posted of developments. Read our response.