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Income Tax and Investment Property – Why Place it on the Long Finger?

The phone call
One lunch time while sitting down to have a well deserved cup of freshly ground coffee, my phone rang. I answered it and I started a conversation with a young man who was obliviously uncomfortable with the whole idea of dealing with a tax advisor. Let’s call him ‘M’!

M had come to me as a referral from existing income tax client. He owned an investment property and didn’t know how to deal with the tax situation. He searched on the internet and visited all the chat rooms and got a list of different answers as long as his arm. The pinnacle came when a colleague from work, some years older than himself heard about his situation and informed him that, “he’d have to pay a bucket load of tax…” Of course, this response led him to a number of sleepless nights until a friend (my client) gave him my number and told him to go and have a chat with me.

The above is a classic situation of numerous phone calls that I receive. Where people have worried themselves and missed numerous hours of sleep worrying about a situation that can be rectified (almost!) by a phone call to a friendly tax advisor or accountant. The hardest thing is making that call!

Business Formation Part 3 – Limited Company

We are now at the final part of the 3 Part series covering the main options open to anyone wishing to start a business. This option is to form a Limited Company.

There are number of types of limited …

Business Formation Part 1 – Sole Traders

Contrary to what many people might think, there are still significant numbers of people setting up new business ventures. For example, in the week ending March 30th, CRO statistics show that 335 Limited Companies were formed and 254 Business Names were registered. Whilst this is much less than was the case in, say 2007, it nonetheless indicates that there are many people out there who are either making the leap to self-employment or that there are self-employed people setting up new ventures.

Tax Return Season – The Worst Thing To Do Is Nothing!

This is the time when all proprietary directors must file a form 11 by the 31st October 2010 for the tax period ending 31st December 2009. However, this is not just limited to proprietary directors! Anyone with additional income will need to file a tax return also.

Income Tax Deadline… What are you waiting for?

October 31st 2010 is the deadline for the self employed, Directors and people declaring other forms of income outside of PAYE, for example, Investment rental properties!

The reason why I’m writing this article is as follows, I have been a practicing accountant for over eight years and every year I am baffled by the amount of people that come to me in a panic on or around the 31st Oct, needing to complete their tax returns from the previous year. Yes, you read correctly, from the previous year!

This means that the 31st Oct 2010 is the deadline for all worldwide incomes to be declared to the Revenue Commissioners for the year ending 31st December 2009. Therefore, you have ten months to get your act together.