This year's submission to the Minister for Finance by the accountancy profession focuses on using the tax system to support both indigenous and foreign direct investor firms as they sustain and create jobs.

The main points of the submission, co-authored by Chartered Accountants Ireland, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland, and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. are:

• Senior executives should be encouraged to re-locate to Ireland, to lead investment and job creation. The submission advocates refinements to the existing remittance basis.
• While recognising that all taxpayers must shoulder an additional burden of taxation compared with previous years, a maximum effective tax rate should be introduced. The proposal here is that no matter how the tax charge arises – PRSI, Income Tax, even a property tax, the aggregate of all these taxes shouldn't exceed a fixed percentage of income. Similar systems operate already in other EU Member states, for example France and Sweden. The approach offers certainty while ensuring a fair proportion of tax is collected.
• Ireland needs to further develop its R&D regime, not merely through extending the relief offset rules, but also by a programme of information and administrative coordination.
• BES and Seed Capital Relief should be more accessible and more widely available to help our indigenous industry over the credit crisis. In particular, the kind of companies which can avail of BES is too restrictive at present.

The full submission is available below at 2.01.