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WHILE MULTINATIONALS MULL over Ireland’s headline-grabbing move to shut the Double Irish tax loophole, TheJournal.ie has taken a deeper look at what’s in this year’s Budget for the real engine room of the economy.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make up over 99% of all Irish businesses and employ nearly 70% of the private-sector workforce, and we want to know how good a job you think the government has done with yesterday’s financial roadmap.
First, here is a summary of some of the highlights, and lowlights, from Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s delivery:
Lower taxes for microbreweries, which will now receive a 50% discount on excise duty for making up to 30,000 hectolitres of beer a year. The old limit was 20,000 hectolitres
Increasing the amount of money Irish companies can raise under the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS), which offers tax breaks for investors sinking up to €5 million a year into local firms, and several other tweaks to the program
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What’s the reaction?
Most business groups have given the budget an overall nod of approval with Ibec, which counts several multinationals and Ireland’s biggest companies among its members, particularly glowing in its praise.
“This is a good budget for the economy; it will support business and consumer confidence and crucially it improves personal spending power for 2015,” the lobby group said.
But the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME) gave the government a spray for delivering an “uninspiring” Budget for entrepreneurs that did nothing to fix the unfair tax discrimination against the self employed.
So there are the details and a few opinions but the real, €1 million question is: Do you think your business will be better off thanks to this year’s Budget?
Poll Results:
About the same (466)
Too early to say (243)
No, slightly worse (199)
No, much worse off (169)
Yes, slightly better (159)
Yes, definitely better off (116)
All this month, as part of TheJournal.ie’s in-depth coverage of the small- and medium-enterprise (SME) sector, we will be looking at key money matters for local businesses and entrepreneurs.
If you know an SME or startup that is doing interesting things in money management let us know by sending an email below.
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I’m self employed earning only an average wage and very annoyed that the allowance that is only given to paye workers was not reinstated …. Especially since I pay money every month to the revenue technically making me a PAYE worker anyway! I get nothing if I lose my clients so cost the state nothing this was the least they could have done :(
I am. But ive known this woman since i was a kid, so i am.used to her humour. Tomorrow we shall be sitting down to figure out how to make it work for me
I am currently considering an expansion of my small business which would require a hefty bank loan and a requirement for increasing my current part-time employee up to full-time. If the expansion goes well, then I will take home only 45% of any extra profit (a figure unchanged after the budget) whereas if the expansion doesn’t go well then I am left to deal with 100% of the fallout from the additional risks I might take on.
FG in this budget seem to be exploiting the fact that they can continue the soaking of small business owners since all of the opposition parties plans involve even worse treatment. For a party who say that their priority is job creation (rather than getting themselves and their coalition partners re-elected), their actions in this regard speak a lot louder than their words.
I am looking for angel investors for my new on line company……FG/L have said their will be more money available in this sector after the Budget which I am very pleased to hear. I am one of the lucky ones who have gained a couple hundred after the budget. The only parties talking economic reality to me at the moment are FG/FF/Labour Sinn Fein are gone to far left to get my vote and the DL less said the better……. the people I really listen too are the economists apart from David Mc Williams who is a spoofer, they all suggest yeasterday should not have being a give away budget, like FF have done in the past for votes.
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