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Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
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Our experienced Corporate Finance team has provided a range of transaction, valuation, deal advisory and restructuring services to clients for the past two decades.
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Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
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Our Digital Transformation team work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Forensic Accounting
Our Forensic and Investigation Services team have targeted solutions to solve difficult challenges - making the difference between finding the truth or being left in the dark.
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Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal setting framework that helps teams, individuals and organisations set and track measurable goals.
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People and Change Consulting
Our People & Change Consulting team help clients adapt to the changing nature of the workforce - how they attract, retain, engage, develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
Grant Thornton is Ireland’s leading provider of insolvency and corporate recovery solutions.
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Our outsourced payroll teams become your dedicated payroll department, aiming to process your payroll in the most cost effective and compliant manner.
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Grant Thornton's reliable and cost-effective outsourcing services help you streamline your business operations by taking care of your workload.
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Grant Thornton’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team serves the needs of rapidly growing mid-tier multinationals operating out of Ireland and other hubs through the provision of services across the full range of finance functions.
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Flexible People Solutions
At Grant Thornton, our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) department have a dedicated team that help finance functions maximise efficiency.
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Our Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions service offering covers a full suite of compliance services including financial statement preparation and related filings, dual bookkeeping, direct and indirect tax, statistical returns and payroll.
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At Grant Thornton, we meet the challenges of our clients. Our Global payroll compliance service offering is tailored to meet all your payroll requirements through a single point of contact.
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Our team helps to unlock the potential of data analytics within your organisation, allowing you to be more innovative, efficient and customer-centric than ever before.
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Digital Risk
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Financial Services Audit
Our Financial Services Audit team offers expertise and knowledge along with a horizontal approach to solving clients’ problems and queries.
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We work closely with clients to understand their strategy and benchmark their performance against the very best international standards.
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Financial Services Tax
Grant Thornton Ireland has a team of over 100 tax professionals providing advice to a diverse range of clients in the Financial Services sector.
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Grant Thornton Pensioneer Trustees Limited
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Our Quantitative Risk team members bring a wide range of experience with many of them having backgrounds in banking, investment markets, regulation, professional practice, and academia.
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We recognise that businesses are operating at different levels of maturity when it comes to sustainability, and pride ourselves on working with our clients to develop bespoke solutions to their needs.
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Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS)
Our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) team designs and implements creative solutions for organisations expanding into new markets or undertaking functional financial transformations.
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Grant Thornton Financial Counselling (GTFC) comprises a team of highly qualified professionals who offer financial advice to individuals and corporates across a range of areas including savings, investments, pension planning, and inheritance and succession planning.
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Our services on Inheritance Planning mirror those on Succession Planning whereby the foundations of the plan are derived from meaningful conversations with those that wish to pass on or protect their asset base.
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Personal Tax Compliance & Planning
The Grant Thornton Personal Tax team helps clients remain compliant and up to date with all of their tax obligations whilst ensuring that they are solutions driven and manage their finances in the most tax efficient way possible.
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Succession Planning
We have extensive experience guiding our clients successfully through the succession process. This involves advice on both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the process. While there is a business at the core of each succession plan we advise on, it is all predicated on understanding the people and their respective wishes.
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Grant Thornton’s Company Secretarial team contains qualified Company Secretaries. Clients are assured that they will meet all of their obligations under the Companies Acts and other relevant legislation and regulations.
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Our Corporation Tax team is made up of more than 40 highly experienced senior partners and directors who work directly with a wide range of domestic, international, and financial services clients. We place a strong emphasis on direct service to clients and we pride ourselves on the close personal relationships we build and the deep understanding of their businesses we develop
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Employer Solutions
Attracting and retaining key talent, managing employment costs and ensuring compliance with complex tax rules presents one of the most serious challenges today for many businesses. You need to ensure that your business complies with increasingly complex tax legislation and can adapt to updated Revenue guidance in a cost-effective way and we are here to help.
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Financial Services Tax
The Grant Thornton team is made up of experts who are fully up to date in terms of changing and evolving tax legislation. This is combined with industry expertise and an in-depth knowledge of the evolving financial services regulatory landscape.
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International Tax
We develop close relationships with clients in order to gain a deep understanding of their businesses to ensure they make the right operational decisions. The wrong decision on how a company sells into a new market or establishes a new subsidiary can have major tax implications.
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Tax Advisory
The Grant Thornton Tax Advisory team blends commercial experience and knowledge with tax expertise to advise clients on the full range of transactions including sales, mergers, restructurings and succession planning.
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Tax Incentives
Our Tax Incentives team help clients access vital cash funding and tax incentives to enable them to achieve their growth ambition.
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Transfer Pricing
Our Transfer Pricing team has extensive experience across all industries. They can assist clients in overcoming challenges and deliver sector specific, sustainable solutions.
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VAT
Grant Thornton’s team of indirect tax specialists helps a range of clients across a variety of sectors including pharmaceuticals, financial services, construction and property and food to navigate these complexities.
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Real Estate Tax Advisory
The Irish real estate market has experienced considerable change in recent years. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of challenges for investors, but has also brought about significant opportunities. With this in mind, taxation is now more than ever one of the key factors for real estate investors when appraising investments, financing methods and development structuring.
Research and Development Tax Relief – latest updates from Revenue
29 Apr 2021Revenue published the long–awaited updates to their Research and Development (R&D) guidelines covering the treatment of rental expenditure. The updates also include information on the treatment of subsidies received under the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) and Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS).
Treatment of rent
R&D guidelines which issued on 1 July 2020, stated that ‘Rent is expenditure on a building or structure and is excluded from being expenditure on research and development by section 766(1)(a) TCA 1997.’ Previously, in our experience Revenue would have accepted the inclusion of rent when included in the same manner as other overheads, i.e. where a just and reasonable apportionment has been used. Since publication of the guidance July last, the Revenue’s position on rent has been a continuous discussion between tax advisors and Revenue, it has been engrained in most, if not all, discussions with clients involved in research and development. Clarity was sought from Revenue on their position on rent and also on the application of this position to historic and new claims for R&D tax relief.
Latest position
In these latest updates, Revenue’s stated view is that in “many cases expenditure incurred on renting a space or facility, which is used by a company to carry on an R&D activity, may be expenditure that is incurred “for the purposes of”, or “in connection with”, the R&D activity but will not constitute expenditure incurred wholly and exclusively in the carrying on of the R&D activity”. According to the Revenue update, the eligibility of rental expenditure for relief will depend on the “extent to which it is incurred wholly and exclusively in the carrying on of the R&D activities”.
What does it mean?
In certain scenarios, rental expenditure may be included as part of an R&D tax relief claim. In cases where a building is rented, which is ‘”integral to the carrying on” of R&D activities, rent may be treated as an allowable expense, such as renting a specialist laboratory required purely for carrying out the R&D activity. On the other hand, if a company rents a warehouse or office space where R&D activities happen, the rent will not be treated as eligible expenditure.
While Revenue maintain their position on the treatment of rent and this is disappointing, we understand from communications we have had with Revenue that this position will only apply for accounting periods commencing from 1 July 2020. We expect that Revenue will not examine R&D claims retrospectively for the inclusion of rent.
Treatment of TWSS and EWSS
All subsidy amounts received by companies under the TWSS and EWSS are considered State support and therefore such amounts will reduce the qualifying eligible expenditure. Therefore, businesses should identify TWSS and EWSS subsidy amounts received for staff working on R&D tax relief projects and reduce their qualifying R&D tax relief expenditure accordingly.
Early payment of cash instalments due in 2021
Revenue also provide separate guidance on their website on the early payment of cash instalments due in 2021. Repayable R&D tax credits are not typically available until at least nine months after the end of the company’s accounting period. However, given the exceptional circumstances due to Covid-19 Revenue will expedite the payment of any instalment of excess R&D tax credit that is due to be paid in 2021 i.e. the 1st instalment of 2020, 2nd instalment of 2019 and 3rd instalment of 2018.
How to claim
To avail of this early payment, a claim must be made to Revenue, and at the time of the claim, the corporation tax return for the accounting period ending in 2020 and for accounting periods ending up to March 2021, must be filed with Revenue. Claims will be subject to Revenue checks.
How can we help?
At Grant Thornton, we prioritise the specific requirements of each client, ensuring their R&D tax relief claim is fully maximised and substantiated in line with both R&D legislation and the latest Revenue guidelines. Our multidisciplinary team have extensive experience navigating Revenue audits and periodically meet with Revenue and industry leaders in order to stay up to date on the latest changes.
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