New company offers cross border tax advisory service
New cross border tax specialists and Intertrade Ireland clients Mascan Finance can help workers negotiate the tricky bureaucracy of working on one side of the border and living on the other.
Traditionally, an individual is regarded as a cross-border worker in Ireland if they work on one side of the border, but reside on the other side and return to their residence at least once a week.
Frontier workers, which is the term used to describe those who work in a cross border context, have been obliged to pay income tax both in the country in which they work and in the country in which they live, making for potentially complex taxation scenarios for anyone living on one side of the border and regularly working on the other side.
For Northern Ireland residents deemed to be working in the Republic of Ireland, they will have Republic of Ireland income tax deducted automatically from their salary and paid directly to Revenue and Customs.
They will also be obliged to submit an annual self-assessment income tax return to the HMRC to declare their foreign income. Northern Ireland-resident frontier workers may find themselves in a position where they have a balance of UK tax to pay to HMRC if they are taxed less in the Republic of Ireland than they would have been if they had paid tax on the sterling equivalent of this income in the UK. However, they may be in a position in which they are eligible to claim tax relief for any Republic of Ireland income tax and Universal Social charges paid. A Double Taxation Agreement is currently in place between the UK and Ireland, so frontier workers living in Northern Ireland may be awarded a credit for any tax paid to the authorities in the Republic of Ireland.
For Republic of Ireland residents working in Northern Ireland, they will have their UK income tax deducted automatically from their salary and paid to the UK HMRC.
In the same way that their Northern Ireland-resident counterparts have to file a self assessment return, they will have to submit an annual self-assessment tax return to the Republic of Ireland revenue and customs authorities. Again, they may be in a position to claim tax relief on the income tax that may be payable in the Republic of Ireland.
Mascan Finance have a team of highly specialised tax advisors who can help companies and individuals navigate their way through these complex arrangements to ensure that they are fulfilling their tax obligations and availing of the appropriate relief measures, where possible.