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:

• The introduction of a “knowledge development box” offering a tax discount on profits from innovation, pending EU approval of similar schemes
• An extension of the three-year corporate tax waiver for startups providing a maximum discount of €40,000 each year
• Higher taxes on cigarettes and tobacco, and a planned rise in gambling duty

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• Removing the 80% cap on the amount of research and development spending companies can claim off their tax
• No motoring-related tax increases after a series of hikes on Vehicle Registration Tax and fuel tariffs in previous budgets
• 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
• Dropping the USC rates for low- and middle-income earners, although the rates were increased for those in the top brackets. The highest marginal income-tax rate was also reduced from 41% to 40%
• The reduced VAT rate of 9% for the tourism and hospitality sectors will be maintained after heavy lobbying from those industries 

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• The corporate tax rate of 12.5% will not be changed after Noonan said that “never has been and never will be up for discussion”
• Incentives to encourage farmers to take out long-term leases on land and help for farmers who take out a second job support their primary production income
• No winding back of higher tax rates for the self employed
• 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

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?

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.

READ: Here’s Michael Noonan’s Budget 2015 speech in full >

READ: What I Learned: One TD’s journey from the cabbage farm to the Dáil >

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