The Institute recently responded to three important public consultations. Firstly, in our submission to the consultation by the Department of Finance on Review of Local Property Tax (LPT), we recommended that the valuation date, exemptions and reliefs under the LPT regime should be regularly reviewed to ensure that the property tax continues to provide a stable and sustainable yield in the medium and long-term and that LPT should be deductible as a genuine business expense against taxable rental income.

Secondly, the Institute made a detailed contribution to the consultation held by the Department of Finance and Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine on the implementation of the Agri-taxation Review 2014 and income stabilisation and taxation. We recommended that important measures, such as CGT Farm Restructuring Relief, Stamp Duty Relief for Young Trained Farmers and Stock Relief which are due to expire over the next two years, should be retained into the future, as these reliefs are critical to safeguarding the succession and viability of many Irish farms.

Thirdly, the Institute submitted a comprehensive response to the consultation on the Review of Enterprise Investment Incentive (EII) and Start-Up Refunds for Entrepreneurs (SURE) schemes, which is being carried out by Indecon Economic Consultants, on behalf of the Department of Finance. In our submission, we highlighted the difficulties members are experiencing with the operation of EII. We would like to thank members for sharing their experiences on how the EII is currently operating, which helped us to formulate our response to this consultation.

At the end of May, the Institute also delivered its Pre-Finance Bill 2018 submission to the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform. The submission included recommendations for technical amendments to tax legislation in key policy areas, including KEEP, professional subscriptions, SARP, Entrepreneur Relief, section 135 TCA 199, and proportionality of interest and penalties.