Accounts attached - The current reality facing beef farmers - Any advice?

I pay 250 or so to a small 1 man band.

I have everything in an excel file. Money in and out and dates and categorised.

I don’t even give him receipts or dockets etc anymore.

Prob takes him an hour to put it together after that.

I keep excel file somewhat uptodate over the course of the year so I can make a small adjustment if needed as I have a fair idea of what capital allowances I have in works, what farm payments are due and what cattle I have left to sell.

Based on my projections to end of year I know that it makes sense to sell two more cattle than I had in plan this year to put against costs remaining to be paid out for this year rather than sell next year and potentially have a tax liability against them.

As a small farmer with less than 50k turnover this is not a big task to keep on top off and pays better than any other farmer job pro rata time spent

Might be 1-2 10 minutes calls or usually an email or 2 so the question.

He has a day job also as a business owner so email is preferred as he can answer in his own time but yes that time must be paid for.

Say you are building a house, how much steel/concrete/timber used in the house can you put into your farm expenses/capital allowances...?

Round €500 here for a small enough farm. Can't complain. Great accountant firm.

Said it before and I'll say it again, they deserve every penny of it and more for working for the farmer, when you compare to a solicitor who works for the government but charges extortionate figures for any kind of business to the likes of myself, and both firms have similar costs, and training to get them qualifications.

Would VAT not be 13.5% as its a service/labour charge and not goods?

Thanks for that. I wonder why it's not classed as a service and charged at the lower rate? Be interested to hear why.

I believe he is speaking as moderator for this section on behalf of boards. Boards can’t promote illegal activity.

I know lads that built their house through farm accounts. Not sure how it would stack up on an audit.

it stacks up in my head……But what do you put it in as? A capital expense of 12k?

Could they be equal pedantic and say should you be paying rates of running a business from the house?

My rule is “if you are explaining and justifying then you are losing”. I think everyone has shoehorned in something unrelated to the farm accounts. But if you take the piss then you may get fucked.

I understand revenue have some pretty advanced algorithms looking at accounts over time to detect suspects changes etc. not sure how true that is but don’t assume you are smarter than them and thing “well I can just say it was this and they will believe it”.

100 percent. Keeping audits and inspectors from the door is the name of the game. Keep of the wrong list.

Same if you got smart with some bordbia inspector or agri consultant for some reason. Last thing you want is them ringing a buddy in the agri department and suddenly you are in a cross compliance inspection. Small country.

what are you on about? How have you conflated what I said to “laws the greens bring in”. Or that I somehow work with the IFA.

I am suggesting staying within the law (or as close as possible with regards to tax, don’t take the piss and you will keep their focus from you as they have bigger fish to fry). It’s pretty simple stuff to be honest but I am not surprised you can’t grasp it based on your reactionary post that added literally nothing to the conversation which is typical of your posting.

And I am also suggesting work with the inspectors (be it bordbia or Agri consultants) etc not against them as it’s a small country. Again not a difficult thing to grasp.

I borrowed that from another thread. If the farmers don't start standing up for themselves there will be nothing to pass on to our children. Especially rough land farmers. I have nothing against you 893bet. But shortly we will be only be a labourer on our own farms. There is no caller to my yard that ain't offered a cup of tea but the last board bia inspection, I was asked for my coop login details. And he got told to **** off. He can go to the department or not. He passed it anyway. We have to say stop somewhere

A lot would depend on what your cows are valued at in the books. If they are near realistic values you shouldn’t have a big tax bill but in my experience they are valued well low.

Having stock valued at realistic values is important alright. If they are valued low you can use low profit years to gradually increase them. If cows are sold below the book value they are technically making a loss

Where correct values may come against you is if you are expanding, and it increases the tax liability