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THERE’S SOME VERY welcome news for those who own their own business and the self-employed today with the government launching a major new tax rebate scheme.
The scheme, known as ‘StartUp Refunds for Entrepreneurs’ (SURE) will allow entrepreneurs to reclaim up to 41% of capital they have personally invested in their business.
SURE is essentially a rebrand of the state’s Seed Capital Scheme, the blurb surrounding which tended to be a bit impenetrable for most business owners.
In making the scheme more accessible, the government is showing a slightly more savvy approach to encouraging take-up, with harsh lessons learned perhaps from the lack of use of, say, mortgage arrears schemes.
SURE itself essentially works as an income tax refund and is primarily aimed at encouraging people, such as the retired or the unemployed, to start their own business.
“In Ireland we have great start-ups, we just don’t have enough of them,” said Jobs minister Richard Bruton at the SURE launch.
We are determined to ensure that as many people as possible are aware of this scheme so that more people start businesses and help create the jobs we need.
Mark Fielding, CEO of ISME (Irish Small and Medium Enterprise association) says the scheme is “definitely an improvement” on what has gone before.
The fact that the self-employed are treated on an inequal basis when it comes to welfare payments and tax is a particular bugbear of Ireland’s small firms’ representatives.
“It (the SURE scheme) is an improvement, I can’t say differently than that, and it’s something we’ve lobbied for,” Fielding told TheJournal.ie.
It’s essentially a rebranding of what went before, but that’s no bad thing. Nobody could understand what was there before, you’d have needed a degree in linguistics to get through it.
We will certainly be promoting this. The powers that be are becoming more savvy in their promotion of these schemes, and without that extra push it’s hard to get things done.
Fielding says small firm owners need all the help they can get at present.
Small businesses in Ireland depend more on bank finance than do our cousins across Europe. The average is probably 60% of funding here, and 30% in Europe.
So any scheme that helps is welcome.
Applications can be made for the SURE scheme here.
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We started up our own business around 3 years ago and never so much were given a cent towards anything! Now we won’t receive a cent if it goes under tomorrow.
I’m the same Jennie , took a huge risk in setting up, have worked 7 days, 12 to 24 hours a day and struggle to keep afloat, and bugger all for it if I fail
12to14 hours I meant
Are you sure they gave you nothing?
No vat rebate on equipment? No tax credits for expenditures?
If you didn’t get this you should talk to your accountant
That’s a common myth. You may get a Social Welfare if you become unemployed in the form of Jobseekers allowance (JSA). The difference is that your payment would be means tested whereas somebody who worked for the last 10 years would get Jobseekers benefit, which is not meanstested, for 9 months and then move onto meanstested JSA.
Mathew that is not true for most who were self employed…
Michael, that is true for EVERYONE who is self employed. He’s right, it’s a surprisingly common myth.
If you have been self employed and your business went under tomorrow and you were means tested to have no other household income, you’d get the same dole as anyone else on job seekers benefit. It’s just called something different.
That is if it went down the plug within a short time period but if you are self employed for a while then your screwed with the system, so the self employed get zero… Being self employed is nearly as bad as being a tax dodger and criminal with those ones…
That’s not true Michael. I was self employed for almost 10 years and when it failed I was entitled to Jobseekers Allowance.
Now. If only they would enact laws to protect subcontractors that would be great.
What about the self employed who looses their business and then are unemployed who can’t get the dole because they were self employed?
Starting isn’t the problem…staying in business is. When will anyone in government ever realise this.
It controls the markets for those who have made it big and donated to government parties???
You’d nearly start to think we’ve an election coming soon….
TDs fall over themselves trying to get their photo with the CEO of a foreign company which will employ 60 people but ignore the plights of the small Irish entrepreneurs, 10 of whom would employ the equivalent amount of workers.
SURE – It won’t let you down*
*Not guaranteed.
This probably has nothing whatsoever to do with buying votes
So, a quick and easy rebrand of existing scheme, to give the impression that this Government actually gives a rat’s ass about entrepreneurs and self employed, with no extra benefits or concessions, or even input, to reflect the state of business in Ireland today. So they reckon they can buy those votes as cheaply as they think they can buy the Public Sector votes…guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Does this benefit just new start-ups or can it benefit existing small businesses? If it just benefits start-ups, in many cases it helps a new competitor at the expense of an existing (and often struggling) business.
Once the 41 % income tax rebate extends to all investors in the new venture, not just for the promoters / management team’s investment, this scheme has a chance of success.
If Government supports and encourages a collaborative funding model,with a tax-break element, for SME start- ups, people with drive and determination, seeking to start a biz, would be able to convince friends and relations to invest and share the start-up financial burden.
Reason Ireland depends mostly on bank funding is because of lack of alternatives for the SME.Europe is way more developed in this regard. Crowdfunding and Linked Finance fill the void here to some degree, but more needs to be done at Government level to mitigate the risks for the guy leaving secure employment and entering the shark-infested waters of Ireland’s business world with his new venture.
Let’s face it: a guy with a young family and a chunk of savings mustn’t go all-in on a risky new business venture. It’s a recipe for disaster down the road if things don’t go according to plan.
Collaboration, Collaboration, and more Collaboration is the way to go to share the risk, as one can rarely make it on one’s own building a sustainable Business in modern day Ireland.
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