Damien Malone

What is healthcare insurance deduction? So, let’s first unpack what the deduction is. The health care insurance deduction would allow the self-employed who qualify to write off 100 of their insurance premiums. This includes the premiums for your spouse, dependents and insurance plans that cover children up to 26 years old, even if they are not dependents. When you take the deduction, it will apply to only your federal taxes, state taxes and local income taxes but will not apply to any self-employment taxes. Requirements for the healthcare insurance deduction To be eligible for the deduction, two requirements must be met.  The first requirement is that you are not eligible to participate in a health insurance plan by your employer or your spouse’s employer. But say at some point in the year you or your spouse are eligible to participate in a health insurance plan by an employer, you can only claim health insurance premium write-ups for the months where you are not eligible....

The first thing to know is that when you hear terms like sole trader and company in the context of a business, you’re looking at the business’s legal structure.  The legal structure of any given business will determine which rules and regulations it needs to follow in different areas, such as tax. It is important because if you’re legally structured as a sole trader, you won’t be concerned with the rules and regulations applicable to incorporated businesses and vice versa. A sole trader operates their business in their capacity. They have full entitlement to all of the profits and losses that arise from the business’s activities. With sole traders, the key thing to remember is that there’s no legal distinction between their business and their own personal identity.  What this means is that if you’re operating your business as a sole trader, any business profits are seen to be attributable to you as an individual, which is important for tax purposes.  This is where so...

The Americans have lots of different products. They have 401ks, they have traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs, which I’m just going to focus on now. So when comparing a Roth IRA to a PRSA, let’s compare all of the different attributes they have. So first off is your contributions to a Roth IRA in America. When making their contributions, that income is already taxed before they put the money into their Roth IRA. But when you put your money into a PRSA in Ireland, you will get a tax credit of 20 or 40 percent, depending on how much you earn. This is probably one of the best tax benefits of the Irish system. You can instantly get a 66 return on your money because for every 60 euros that you put into your pension, you’re going to get a 100 euro benefit if you earn over 36 800 euros. So you would be a bit of a fool not to be availing on it next up. Let’s compare contribution limits so for a Roth IRA. People can contribute either six thousand dollars a year or seven thousand dollars a yea...

Outsourcing your accounting function and just outsourcing, in general, has become really popular over the past couple of years, whether that be outsourcing your HR, or your legal department. It might be a really good option for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t really have the funds or the need to hire someone full-time in-house, but they can get a lot of the same expertise by outsourcing it to a company that can provide that role for them.  Accounting is no different from any of the other ones.  So, let’s dive into five reasons you should look to do this for your accounting department. Possible money savings  The first one is the big one. It’s all about money. Hiring a controller or a CFO-level person for your business is really expensive, and it’s not just the salary cost.  There are benefits; there’s training if they have any downtime. You know you’re paying for that. When you outsource it, you eliminate many of these, and you’re basically just pay...

Business Foundations Your first foundation is figuring out your finances. One of the most important things to consider when starting your own business is your finances. Will you start your business as a side hustle, while working in your full-time or part-time job or do you have the finances to take your business full-time straight away? The advantage of starting your business as a side hustle is that you’ll have the financial security of receiving a wage while getting your business set up. If you’re going to take your business full time straight away, you’ll need to make sure you have enough money saved up to cover your living costs and for any unexpected events for at least a year, while your business is growing. Next up is deciding what business you will start. Find your passion. To start, the best way to get ideas for a business to start is by identifying your skills, education and passions that could be translated into a business idea.  Skills are things that you have exp...

I’m going to explain to you the four main taxes that you need to know about if you’re running a business in Ireland.  4 main taxes in Ireland It doesn’t matter if you’re running a company or if you’re just a sole trader, everyone pays taxes, and these are the four main taxes that you need to be concerned with: income tax cooperation, tax, VAT and employment taxes. The only difference between income, tax and corporation tax is our income.  Taxes for sole traders and corporation tax is for companies. You only really need to be concerned about VAT if your company meets certain thresholds. You shouldn’t worry about employment taxes either unless your company employs staff or you’re getting paid a salary through your company. So let’s get started.  How do you register for taxes in Ireland? When you incorporate the company, you should get a six-digit company number, which enables you to invoice your customers around the same time of incorporation.  You should regist...