CHAMBER FEATURE BUDGET 2018
Reflections on
BUDGET 2018
Budget 2018 offered something small for everyone, but not enough for Ireland’s entrepreneurs and small businesses, writes Elisha Collier O’Brien.
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n October 10th 2017, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe delivered the Budget 2018 package, which set out the Government’s spending expenditure plans for 2018 and beyond. Following the publication of our own pre-budget submission, which outlined the key policies that Irish business was seeking, Chambers Ireland watched Minister Donohoe deliver the Budget with great anticipation. In our pre-budget submission, we recommended that Government focus on three key areas based on engagement with our network of local chambers across the country. We asked that Government focus on significantly increasing investment in infrastructure, on policies that enable small businesses to grow and thrive, and to assess the competitiveness of our tax regime over the medium to long-term, taking into account our investment needs along with the competitive global context in which Ireland is operating. Under each of these three policy areas, we outlined policy proposals for Government to consider for inclusion in Budget 2018.
small for everyone. We were largely disappointed by the lack of entrepreneurial focus in Budget 2018. This was a missed opportunity to support and encourage Ireland’s small businesses, start-ups and scale-ups. The slow pace of delivery on tax equity for the self-employed has been frustrating and there remains a discrepancy of 500 between the PAYE Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. We need Government to show that it values the entrepreneurs and risk-takers that help drive Ireland’s economy forward and such an inequity in tax does the opposite. In addition to this, there was no change in the CGT regime, which was a missed opportunity to further enhance Ireland’s competitiveness in advance of the UK’s exit from the European Union. We were, however, pleased to see that many of our recommendations were included in the final budget package, in particular recommendations on increasing the level of capital expenditure in order to fund more infrastructure, to introduce an employee share ownership scheme and to continue increasing investment in childcare. Budget 2018 saw 1.2bn of
new spending announced, split on a 2:1 basis in favour of spending. The Key Employee Engagement Programme will enable SMEs to offer employees share options with advantageous tax treatment, which is to be welcomed. In addition, the Brexit Loan Scheme for SMEs of up to 300m to assist with short-term working capital should serve to help SMEs through the potential challenges in trade that lie ahead. We were also encouraged by the acknowledgement that we must maintain a broad tax base, and while there were cuts made to the USC rates, the entry level to this tax was maintained, ensuring more people remain within the tax net going forward. We are encouraged by the fact that a large number of the policies we advocated for and lobbied Government on were included in this budget, but there is much left to be delivered upon for Ireland’s entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Reflecting on what was included in the Budget 2018 package, overall Chambers Ireland believes that this budget sought to deliver something for everything, albeit something
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InBUSINESS | Q4 2017
22/12/2017 14:24