Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I concur with him about the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises. All small businesses together employ more people than the public sector and the entire multinational sector combined. They employ people in every town, village and parish in the country. We appreciate that costs are rising for businesses. That is why the Minister, Deputy Coveney, got approval this week for his €0.25 billion package to help SMEs with rising costs. We also appreciate that the administrative burden for small businesses can be great because they cannot hire as many administrative staff and do not have a HR or accounts department in the way a big company would.

On the specific matter the Deputy raised, the Finance Act 2022 provides for new requirements under which employers must report to Revenue on or before they provide certain non-taxable benefits to their employees or directors. They are the small benefit exemption, the remote working daily allowance and travel and subsistence payments. Employers are already required to determine the tax treatment of such benefits before providing them to their employees or directors. For compliance purposes, they are also required to record and maintain information which supports that determination, for instance demonstrating that the benefit meets the specific conditions of the relevant tax exemption. While the new reporting requirements have not yet been brought into effect, it is intended they will be in place from 1 January.

The period between enactment and commencement is designed to allow sufficient time for Revenue to undertake stakeholder engagement and ensure successful implementation. To date, the stakeholder engagement process has included issuing a survey to employers and their agents, considering submissions from practitioners and representative bodies, developing technical guidance for software providers and scheduling a series of webinars for employers and their agents. Revenue will continue to issue guidance on the reporting requirements and participate in other industry events in the coming months. As with any change in established procedure, there is likely to be a bedding-in period during which stakeholders will need to adapt to the new procedures. I am assured that Revenue has incorporated information gained from stakeholder engagement into the development of the enhanced reporting regime to ensure the mechanisms and processes will not be overly onerous and that employers will have a variety of mechanisms through which they can make their returns.

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