‘All Business Relationships End, Whether It’s An Exit, Illness Or A Falling Out. What’s Your Plan?‘

Cillian Balfe – Lawyer

The periods for P30s are every month or 3 months, starting from the 1st of January!

Starting a business can be quite impulsive and tends to draw optimistic people together, which maybe isn’t a great recipe for pre-planning. But, over that time I built a simple pattern for spotting types of co-founders.

In this post, we’ll learn about my experiences with 3 types of co-founders, the good, the bad and the ugly. How you can avoid the ugly, and find the good.

Ultimately all relationships end, whether that’s an exit or a fallout. I’ll show you what I did with each real-world situation, and how you can be smarter about it.

We’ll hear from my solicitor who advised on some of the exits. He’ll give his experience dealing with a lot of company breakups.

Also an interview with my co-founder of Bullet and how we managed our split to remain friends and work buddies.

I’ve put together a simple founder’s workbook I think every team should fill out, it starts a good framework before the high fives stop.

Take Away:

– Founders can be grouped into the good, the bad, the ugly. Avoid the latter.

– A little pre-planning will help you find the right partner and save a lot of heart-ache.

Ok, so you’ve formed your company and got your certificate of incorporation. Bullet has put together this document together will so you’ll have everything you’ll need setup employees, claim grants and everything else. We’ve looked for the quickest way to do this with the least amount of work and in the order, you should do it in.
Here are the key points items you’ll get sorted.

• Register for all your taxes, get your tax clearance cert for
  Grants
• Bank Account & what you’ll need to bring
• Register you and staff as employees
• Employees overview
• Vat overview
• Corporate tax returns overview
• B1 form & Annual Return overview
• FAQ’s

Remember Bullet automates all your tax returns so you can just focus on growth.

The TR2 form covers all this; Corporation Tax, PAYE/PRSI, VAT, RCT

• If you’ve already registered for your Corporation Tax and want to register the company as an Employer then you’ll need to fill
  out the PREM REG
• It takes around 5 – 10 days to go through
• http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/forms/formtr2.pdf

Registering with ROS (Revenue Online Services) is important as it makes filing all your returns that much simpler. When you click “Register for ROS” on revenue’s homepage you are led through a three-step process, the process takes about 8 working days to go through and afterwards you will be issued with a Digital Certificate. Your Digital Certificate enables you to access ROS and utilise its full range of services.
http://www.ros.ie/PublisherServlet/info/setupnewcust

In case you’re required to produce a Tax Clearance Certificate, i.e. get a grant, you can;

• Apply online for a general tax clearance certificate; https://www.ros.ie/tcc/identification.jsp
• Or if you’re after one as a PAYE customer then you need to download this form: https://www.ros.ie/tcc/identification.jsp
• The form should then be returned to your Local Revenue District http://www.revenue.ie/en/contact/index.html

• You can register new employees directly with Revenue if you have their full name, PPSN and start date
• Your phone/e-mail a Revenue Regional Office – for example, Dublin City Centre is; 1890 333 425 or citycentrepaye@revenue.ie. For all others see here;
• You’ll have to decide a payroll period be it; weekly, fortnightly or monthly. For each payroll period, you’ll need to calculate the
  taxes for it. Payroll software would do these calculations for you.
• Things are much simpler if you agree on the gross pay with an employee rather than net pay. Meaning the gross pay is what an employee would get before and tax was taken off.

Each month you’ll have to file a P30

• This lists out the amount of PRSI/PAYE paid that month
• If you file online then this return is filed on the 23rd of the month immediately following the income tax month during which the deductions were made, otherwise, it would be on 14 days from the end of the income tax month.

At the end of each accounting year there a couple of things you need to do

• Complete P35: Employer’s annual declaration and certificate for tax and PRSI purposes
• Fill in P35L Where the employer makes the return of PAYE and PRSI particulars in respect of each employee.
• The should be only one entry for each employee here
• A form P35L/T would be used if you didn’t have an employees PPSN

Fill out Form P35LF; it’s used to record Total Taxable Benefits

• These forms have to be filed by February the 15th of the following year
• You’ll have to provide your employees with a P60
  – Between the first of January and the fifteenth of February (if they were in your employment at the 31/12 of the previous year).
  – This is a certificate showing Total Pay, Tax and PRSI contributions for the year ended on 31 December
• Employer’s Guide to PAYE – 1890 25 45 65 or employerhelp@revenue.ie

• When you’ve registered with Revenue you’ll have to start making VAT Returns. These are done online through ROS on a VAT 3
• Revenue will let you know how often you have to pay e.g. bi-monthly.
• Once a year as well you’ll have to make a VAT RTD (Return on Trading Details), this basically splits out all the different rates of VAT from your invoices and Bills. http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/vat-returning-trading-details-sample.pdf

• Small start-up companies can get a three-year exemption on their corporation tax.
• You file your CT1 before nine months after your accounting year end
• When you do pay your tax return you pay it nine months into your accounting year. You then pay any outstanding balance for that when you file you CT1 for that year
• http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/ct/forms/ct1.pdf

• You have to also be aware that you don’t only have to file forms with Revenue. You also have to file a B1 form with the CRO (Company Registration Office). http://www.cro.ie/ena/annual – return.aspx
• Like with Revenue they have an online service you can you use to do this – CORE. https://www.core.ie/Main/register_iri.jsp The B1 is an annual return which shows certain company information.
• Thankfully there are no payments involved in this one. Like with other returns though there is a fee involved if you’re late filing.
• You file your first form within 6 months of incorporation without accounts and you do include them though in your next return 18 months after incorporation.
• You might want to claim an audit exemption. While there is no need for the accounts to be attached to the first return, a set of audited account will be required on subsequent returns if you don’t file for the exemption. So for the future, while you do have to submit your accounts with your return, you would not have to endure the expense of employing an auditor.
• To get it all you have to do is tick a box for on it the B1 form.

All these forms and dates are a pain to remember but Bullet helps automate them and for most cases allows you to upload them directly to where they need to be.

• You’ll either need a completed Form 12A or P45 from them which you’ll have to forward to the local tax office
• Complete and submit Form P45 part 3 to the employee’s Revenue office.
• If an employee has worked previously (in Ireland) but doesn’t provide you with a Form P45, you will have to complete a P46 Form or contact the tax office; providing details of the new employee’ name, PPS number, etc.
• For new employees, they will be taxed using the tax credits and cut off point on the P45 or on the emergency basis if no P45 has been received until the Notice of Tax Credits and Cut-Off is received from the Revenue Commissioners

Audit Exemption

• To qualify for this exemption you have to be able to satisfy the following;
• The company must be a Private Limited Company;
• The amount of turnover of the company must not exceed €8.8 million;
• The balance sheet total of the company is less than €4.4 million at the end of its financial year;
• The average number of employees must not exceed 50;
• The company must not be a parent company or a subsidiary company;
• The annual returns must be up to date, having never late when filed with the Companies Registration Office and have the abridged financial statements attached.

One of our Growth Specialists will be in touch to help you leverage the 100,000 euro available to you through the Irish Government grant scheme. They’ll also show you how to leverage the tax system to allow you pay for a sales guy.

We hope that helps you some what don’t forget to tweet this out under the hashtag #bullethq, or post on Linkedin and let you’re fellow founders know about it. Our blog is full of early stage startup growth tips.

Thanks

Pete & John