Govt scheme:20% off hotels, restaurants. October to April 2021

McMurphy

I'm going away for a few nights in early Oct to a hotel in Wicklow, just checked and either my eyes are betraying me, or there's not a single Wicklow based hotel on the list ?

vicwatson

The areas I checked show little to no decent hotels. A Direct voucher Scheme would have been more effective

Former Former

McMurphy wrote: »

I'm going away for a few nights in early Oct to a hotel in Wicklow, just checked and either my eyes are betraying me, or there's not a single Wicklow based hotel on the list ?

The scheme only went live a few days ago.

Call up the hotel. Ask if they'll be registering.

If they say no, advise them you're taking your business elsewhere.

vickers209

I see a few costa coffee sites have registered for this.
Couldnt see many spending €25 euro in one go here to qualify,

Just wondering if the €125 claim back is per tax year or for entire scheme

I.e October to December 2020 Claim up to €125 in January 2021

and January to April 2021 Claim up to another €125 in January 2022

Normally revenue work per tax year

Muahahaha

odyssey06 wrote: »

It may be a long shot for them to be part of the scheme, for accomodation there's another hoop for providers to jump through - they have to be Failte Ireland registered. I don't think many air b&b type properties are to that level.

yeah without Failte Ireland registration Airbnb properties wont qualify. Its another flaw in the scheme.

McMurphy wrote: »

I'm going away for a few nights in early Oct to a hotel in Wicklow, just checked and either my eyes are betraying me, or there's not a single Wicklow based hotel on the list ?

your eyes aren't deceiving you, the launch was a bit of a cock up in that they did nothing to get hotels to sign up before launch day. The Govt. used launch day to advertise it to both hotels and customers so there was next to nothing for hotels when people went to look on the Revenue data base. On Wednesday night there was one single hotel for Co.Dublin and that was the Raddisson beside the airport. Dublin 2 had three hotels, I think it is up to 7 or 8 now which is still pretty low for the city centre. Take up has been slow so far for a scheme that is there to help the hotels out with business they might not have had (or so the theory goes)

As another poster said ring up and ask them if they're participating. It takes some form filling on their behalf but its not rocket science either.

coolshannagh28

audi02 wrote: »

This scheme is probably more hassle than its worth!

Which is exactly the point of the scheme.

johnire

In order to make a claim does the business have to have registered themselves in the scheme?I had presumed that once you had a receipt for over €25 you could just make a claim but obviously not!

dmc17

vickers209 wrote: »

I see a few costa coffee sites have registered for this.
Couldnt see many spending €25 euro in one go here to qualify,

Just wondering if the €125 claim back is per tax year or for entire scheme

I.e October to December 2020 Claim up to €125 in January 2021

and January to April 2021 Claim up to another €125 in January 2022

Normally revenue work per tax year

Wouldn't be too hard with the price of their coffees!

johnire

Just thinking about the logistics of making a claim.
For example say a restaurant bill comes to €60 but €10 was for drink. It's all going to be on one receipt which I'll be submitting so how are they going to only give me credit for €50 instead of the receipt total which is €60?
Surely someone from Revenue isn't going to have to go through every receipt that's submitted and deduct the alcohol portion of any receipt?
Thanks.

podgeandrodge

johnire wrote: »

In order to make a claim does the business have to have registered themselves in the scheme?I had presumed that once you had a receipt for over €25 you could just make a claim but obviously not!

This. Why the registering requirements? What's wrong with just submitting receipts for hotels etc in Ireland?

Going on couple of weeks cork/Kerry in October and none of the hotels are in the list!!

Muahahaha

johnire wrote: »

In order to make a claim does the business have to have registered themselves in the scheme?I had presumed that once you had a receipt for over €25 you could just make a claim but obviously not!

Yes the business has to be registered, there is a database here to check what hotels/restaurants are participating by county but as said up the thread it is very sparse at the moment. https://www.ros.ie/stay-spend-web/rev/sas
Plus they have to be Bord Failte registered so that will exclide a fair few businesses, especially Airbnbs.

johnire wrote: »

Just thinking about the logistics of making a claim.
For example say a restaurant bill comes to €60 but €10 was for drink. It's all going to be on one receipt which I'll be submitting so how are they going to only give me credit for €50 instead of the receipt total which is €60?
Surely someone from Revenue isn't going to have to go through every receipt that's submitted and deduct the alcohol portion of any receipt?
Thanks.

Id imagine it is going to be up to you to deduct the alcohol portion of your receipt and then to arrive at a final figure for all your food/accomodation costs that you manually enter yourself. You will then have to tick some box confirming that your claim is only for the qualifying expenditure of food or hotel nights.

There is no way they have the human resources to check every receipt but what they might have is OCR software (Opitical Character Recognition). If they do have OCR software then that means they can input words like 'Pint', 'Guinness' 'Vodka' and so on and get the software to scan receipts at random to catch out those including alcohol as part of their claim. Then they'll be back to you saying 'oh look you ticked this box saying your claim was legitimate expenditure but it turns out it isnt' and that will come with a bit of finger wagging from Revenue.

If you're self employed its stunts like that that can see you end up on a database of self declared taxpayers they are lining up to audit. They figure if you cheat a simple return like that then they will likely find even more chicanery in your submitted annual accounts for your business. In the last few years Revenue have spent a lot of money on algorithms and artificial intelligence with the specific aim of catching people under declaring tax.

odyssey06

podgeandrodge wrote: »

This. Why the registering requirements? What's wrong with just submitting receipts for hotels etc in Ireland?

Going on couple of weeks cork/Kerry in October and none of the hotels are in the list!!

Check their website now to see if they are Failte Ireland registered.
If they are, probable they will register for the scheme.

podgeandrodge

odyssey06 wrote: »

Check their website now to see if they are Failte Ireland registered.
If they are, probable they will register for the scheme.

Thanks will do. Don't see the purpose of requiring registration though, it should be a simple claim with receipts from any hotel etc in Ireland.

machiavellianme

vickers209 wrote: »

I see a few costa coffee sites have registered for this.
Couldnt see many spending €25 euro in one go here to qualify,

Just wondering if the €125 claim back is per tax year or for entire scheme

I.e October to December 2020 Claim up to €125 in January 2021

and January to April 2021 Claim up to another €125 in January 2022

Normally revenue work per tax year

The claim is refunded as a tax credit in 2022 (a single tax year)

johnire

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. That all makes much more sense now. I've no problem in deducting non qualifying items from any receipt. I thought quite literally the receipt was just scanned and there was no facility to make any deductions but I suppose that wouldn't be right either so thanks for clearing that up!

Muahahaha wrote: »

Yes the business has to be registered, there is a database here to check what hotels/restaurants are participating by county but as said up the thread it is very sparse at the moment. https://www.ros.ie/stay-spend-web/rev/sas
Plus they have to be Bord Failte registered so that will exclide a fair few businesses, especially Airbnbs.




Id imagine it is going to be up to you to deduct the alcohol portion of your receipt and then to arrive at a final figure for all your food/accomodation costs that you manually enter yourself. You will then have to tick some box confirming that your claim is only for the qualifying expenditure of food or hotel nights.

There is no way they have the human resources to check every receipt but what they might have is OCR software (Opitical Character Recognition). If they do have OCR software then that means they can input words like 'Pint', 'Guinness' 'Vodka' and so on and get the software to scan receipts at random to catch out those including alcohol as part of their claim. Then they'll be back to you saying 'oh look you ticked this box saying your claim was legitimate expenditure but it turns out it isnt' and that will come with a bit of finger wagging from Revenue.

If you're self employed its stunts like that that can see you end up on a database of self declared taxpayers they are lining up to audit. They figure if you cheat a simple return like that then they will likely find even more chicanery in your submitted annual accounts for your business. In the last few years Revenue have spent a lot of money on algorithms and artificial intelligence with the specific aim of catching people under declaring tax.

vickers209

machiavellianme wrote: »

The claim is refunded as a tax credit in 2022 (a single tax year)

nope was reading revenues examples
any spend you make between 1st october and 31st of December can be claimed after 1st of janurary 2021.

But they state you can only claim the remaining portion of your €125 credit if any in January 2022

so if you claim €100 back in your 2020 return
thae max they will allow you to claim is €25 in 2021 return

Browney7

podgeandrodge wrote: »

Thanks will do. Don't see the purpose of requiring registration though, it should be a simple claim with receipts from any hotel etc in Ireland.

Presumably Revenue require a property to register in order to ensure they have their tax affairs in order before availing of this government assistance. As a taxpayer, I'd only want help given to companies that can demonstrate tax compliance

thefareast

Browney7 wrote: »

Presumably Revenue require a property to register in order to ensure they have their tax affairs in order before availing of this government assistance. As a taxpayer, I'd only want help given to companies that can demonstrate tax compliance

In fairness, there will be many small operators particularly B&B's who are failte Ireland registered and tax compliant but ineligible for this scheme as they wouldn't be registered for VAT as their turnover would be under the threshold.

podgeandrodge

vickers209 wrote: »

nope was reading revenues examples
any spend you make between 1st october and 31st of December can be claimed after 1st of janurary 2021.

But they state you can only claim the remaining portion of your €125 credit if any in January 2022

so if you claim €100 back in your 2020 return
thae max they will allow you to claim is €25 in 2021 return

On this "spend you make between 1st October and 31st December" - I know someone else asked already, but are people sure that if you spend the money in say August, for a booking in October, that you can claim? Citizensinformation say spend during the period too...

podgeandrodge

thefareast wrote: »

In fairness, there will be many small operators particularly B&B's who are failte Ireland registered and tax compliant but ineligible for this scheme as they wouldn't be registered for VAT as their turnover would be under the threshold.

That seems unfair.