Important Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT) Reliefs missed by prior Accountants & their Tax Advisors

 

A newly referred client, engaged in their own business for many years with an established firm of accountants, inherited a farm house & lands from his neighbouring bachelor uncle.

 

Seeking to ensure that the CAT reliefs that this client could be entitled to avail of were sufficiently assessed, McGleenan & Co comprehensively & forensically established the facts of this new client’s life-long arrangements, which lead to the following outcome:

 

  • Since the farmhouse had been shared as a full-time accommodation with the uncle for over three years prior to the date of inheritance and the client never owned any other house in his lifetime, this entitled him to claim the little understood PPR Tax-Free Exemption – resulting is a tax saving of €65k. Entitlement to this relief had been missed by the client’s previous accountants & specialist tax advisors who had been brought in especially to handle the inheritance aspects of his tax affairs.

 

  • As the farm lands had been let for several years on a conacre basis, the initial entitlement to apply for the Business Relief Exemption became available within two years of the valuation date after a ground-breaking Court Decision in another case lead to the client being entitled to file an amended CAT return for this element of his inheritance, resulting in a tax refund of €125k.

 

  • In the subsequent period following these two significant Tax-Free Exemption claims Revenue not surprisingly decided to audit this clients CAT returns but McGleenan & Co had ensured that the detailed notes & evidence established at the time the client was taken on, in particular in respect of the PPR Exemption Claim, was sufficiently robust to allow Revenue agree the claims stand in full and to close the audit without any further action.