The Department of Finance has published the Goodbody “Review of the Exemption from Taxation of Patent Income”. The review was carried out as part of the response to the EU Commission's concerns on the Irish patent exemption relief.

The report which is dated February 2007 includes the following recommendations:

• reform of the patent income exemption so that eligibility for the exemption is not based on R & D activities in the State, but is expanded to cover R&D activity in EEA countries.
• to put a cap on qualifying income to limit the tax gain to firms, while extending qualifying income to include R&D conducted outside the State.

Finance Act 2007 included the above recommendations.

A copy of the report is available at
http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/reports/Patincometaxexgoodb.pdf.