Saturday, October 8, 2011

Have you filed your 2010 income tax return yet?

Or are the Revenue radio adverts about the quickly approaching deadline causing you to break out in a sweat? Don’t worry, there is still time to get yourself organised if you get in touch with us quickly. Using Revenue’s online system (ROS) to file your income tax return, you can get the 31st October deadline pushed out by another two weeks to 15th November.

So who is and isn’t required to file an income tax return?

It is not just self-employed persons operating a business who are required to file an income tax return. For example if you are in any of the following categories you may be required to submit an income tax:

- Company directors who also own more than 15% of the shares of the company;

- Individuals (including PAYE workers) with rental income from a second property in Ireland or abroad;

- Persons in receipt of more than €10,000 per annum from renting out a spare room in their own home;

- Persons in receipt of any income which is not taxed through the PAYE system e.g. dividends from shares, foreign income.

Don’t be late! It’ll cost you!

It’s extremely important not to be late in filing your income tax return. This is because you will be charged an automatic late filing penalty which is based on a percentage of your total tax bill. If you are less than 2 months late in filing your return, the penalty will be a total 5% increase to your tax bill. If you are more than 2 months late, the penalty will be a total 10% increase to your tax bill. Ouch.

Why not file a return yourself using ROS?

Unfortunately over the years we have assisted many clients in correcting tax returns that they have submitted themselves to Revenue, only now to find that it is being reviewed by Revenue and that there are number of errors not only resulting in additional taxes being owed, but also interest and fines charged on top!

Anyone that has ever looked at an income tax return or Revenue’s online Form 11 will have quickly found that there is a lot to navigate and a lot that is probably not relevant to you. It is all too easy to put information in the wrong box or to misunderstand some information that is required by Revenue or misunderstand how the tax relief on a particular item works. ROS will just work out the taxes payable based on the information you enter into the boxes. If you enter information correctly, ROS won’t tell you.

In addition to this ROS won’t tell you the options open to you for minimising your taxes owed. Fenero will!

And don’t forget that accountancy fees are tax-deductable so you will get back from the Revenue 41% or 20% of the accountancy fees that you pay (depending on your marginal tax rate). For the sake of a couple of hundred euro in accountancy fees is it worth risking either

a) overpaying in taxes by not being aware of the various avenues open to you to keep your tax bill down or;

b) underpaying in taxes only to be investigated by Revenue in the future and made to pay back the amounts due plus hefty interest and penalty charges?

Fenero actively works with the aim to save you in tax at least as much as our fees!

Plus give you the peace of mind of knowing that everything is being done correctly so there is no need to worry about the Revenue knocking on your door sometime in the future.

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