The UK Government announced at Autumn Budget 2017 that it remains committed to the Northern Ireland Corporation Tax regime on the same terms as before, i.e. “once a restored Executive has demonstrated that its finances are on a sustainable footing”. Subject to this, in 2018–19, the government will consider an announcement on implementing the regime.

The legislation implementing this regime was amended recently as a result of Schedule 7 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017. Broadly, these amendments enable SMEs who do not meet the SME NI employer test in the legislation to be able to avail of the regime for large companies if they have a Northern Ireland regional establishment (NIRE). Other minor amendments to the legislation were also made.

The ability of an SME which does not meet the NI employer test to be able to elect into the regime under the large company test instead was a key recommendation of the NI Tax Committee who made this recommendation in its submission on the draft NICT rate legislation in 2015.

The Institute has now updated its NICT briefing note for these recent developments. This is available to download now from the Chartered Accountants Ireland website www.charteredaccountants.ie. The previous version of the briefing note should therefore be disregarded.