Corporate tax

Had to get that one in.

Then a company's house fee, and then perhaps a corporation tax that still needs to be settled.

The company now has liabilities but no cash.

So you end up transferring money back into the company simply to pay those bills.

In reality, when a company stops trading, every decision can have tax and compliance consequences.

A dormant company bank account isn't just a bank account anymore.

It can affect corporation tax, filing requirements, dividend planning, and how money is ultimately extracted from your business.

Taking a little time to plan before acting will save a lot of time, frustration, heartache and stress later on down the track.

If it's VAT, different set of rules kick in once more.

And the same goes for corporation tax.

Now, a common mistake I see people making is assuming they've got all the time in the world, years and years, to sort things out.

Unfortunately, that's not the case.

The amount of tax burden is...

I mean, seriously, right? If I didn't have to pay 25% corporation tax, my business would have 25% more presenters and more employees, right? The, the size of the business is cons- is circumscribed by taxation, and then the amount that everything costs.

Oh, I have to, you know, spend all of this money on equipment and whatnot.

Well, that costs more because that's got tax on it as well.

It's like, oh, we're gonna leave the European Union.

Okay, great.

Well, what's the corporation tax on the nearest English-speaking EU country? It's like 12 and half percent.

Okay.

[laughs]

Uh, and, uh, w- we, we were talking beforehand about the extraordinary reliance on corporation tax, which is reminiscent to me, uh, and I'm sure to the senior officials in government, of the atmosphere around 2005 or '06 or '07.

You're gonna say stamp duty, aren't you?

Do, do you remember the soft landing?

But-

... or whatever.

But the, the, the, that's what worries me now, that within the next few years, uh, there, there are several different ways in which the corporation tax bonanza could vaporize.

But we've been hearing this every year, Colm.

... well, then all the, the counterpart is, well, we can't be cutting taxes as well.

And that's, I think, where the, the fundamental problem here is, in, in that everything here is being underpinned by corporation tax revenues, and we can, you know, we all know it's just coming from a small number of American multinationals, that, that, and that's really underpinning lots of this.

A- a- and at the same time, what we're seeing as m- spending being increased massively and very, and above what it should be, we're seeing the tax base being hollowed out, and, and we saw that again yesterday.

And f- for, for me, actually, it's not so much the spending side that I think was the problem.

Yeah

... against one another.

What the corporation tax revenues have done is they have meant that, i- in a way, harking back to-

Mm

But, you know, reading into it, a lot of it is because there's a higher tax take and that's mostly because of inflation.

And I saw that it's essentially corporate tax that's doing the heavy lifting and And I think nothing in the medium or long term is suggesting that we're getting on top of our long term issues.

And the one thing that stood out to me of all the reporting was Jo Moyer this morning on Morning Report.

She made this point of saying that back in May in the budget lockup.

And it

is without a doubt an active document that has legal status, blah, blah, blah.

What about the corporate tax rate one? We should just touch on that.

Can we just