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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Ask About Wealth podcast. As regular listeners and subscribers and viewers on YouTube know, we alternate these podcasts between me pontificating away at camera all by myself and guests. And when we bring in guests, we want these guests to bring with them exactly what we're set up to do, which is new knowledge and new information for our viewers, for our listeners.
that will either be beneficial to you, the listener, yourself, or indeed beneficial to somebody you might know. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Steph Wickham. Steph is a Chartered Tax Advisor and Chartered Accountant and founder of expattaxes.ie. Steph, thanks a lot for coming along today.
Thank you so much for having delighted to have you here.
And, you know, while I was telling you before we were recording there that our our listeners and viewers are predominantly Irish based, there is a growing number who are overseas and therefore expats, which fits neatly into your world. And, you know, there is a growing number of people who have no affiliation to Ireland coming on our consoles, for example.
I mean, in the last week, I did 16 consoles. Six of them were from people who from overseas. So there is a rising interest in exactly what you help people to do. And tell us what you specialize in, Steph.
So tax, Irish tax is our main focus. I suppose in terms of the tax heads that we would regularly advise people on, you're looking at the common tax heads like income tax, capital gains, and then obviously capital acquisitions tax, so inheritance and gift tax. We'd have a lot of clients who have questions about, you know, how am I going to be taxed when I come back to Ireland?
Can I transfer money from abroad to Ireland? You know, what do I need to do in advance of my return to be compliant in Ireland and perhaps in another jurisdiction? So our job really is to kind of take
what is essentially complex tax legislation, both from an Irish and an international perspective, and simplify it and apply it for the client so that they can form a plan and get clarity on how they're going to have to pay taxes once they come back to Ireland.
Okay. And in terms of the, do you deal exclusively with people either leaving or coming or do you have, you know, regular tax clients, you know, who are here forever?
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Chapter 2: What should I know about Irish tax before leaving the country?
Yeah. So I suppose what's quite interesting is, you know, we do consultations like like you yourself mentioned you do. And it always resonates with me when I talk to clients about how stressful it can be to be living away from your place of origin. Returning there even can be difficult. We ourselves, my husband and I lived in Australia for eight years. So I had trained with KPMG in Dublin.
We relocated, worked with KPMG in Australia, and then life happens. And we had started a family. And as we were saying before we started to record, there's this common thread that, you know, Irish people feel the pull to come home, that desire to return at some point in their life. For us, it was when we started a family.
And just memories of, you know, the logistics of packing up a container, trying to find a rental property in Ireland and the emotional part of saying goodbye to the friends that you'd made and then returning to a place where life had gone on as if you had, you know, as if you had never left. In some ways, but in other ways, things have moved forward.
So just reconnecting professionally and kind of in a social setting, it's difficult. You know, we call it coming home, but it doesn't always feel like that initially. And as time passes, then you'll find that it gets easier. So often we'll see in forums and with clients that clients are, you know, returning expats will have questions about, am I doing the right thing?
And, you know, is this going to work out? So we try to bring a sense of that when we advise our clients.
In other words, because you've been through it yourself.
And interestingly, obviously, you know, we are a team of eight people. And all of us have actually lived internationally at some point. So that's not one of the prerequisites to work with us.
But it does help that people have a sense of, you know, we're advising on one aspect through the lens of taxes, but just being cognizant of the fact that this is a big life event for the person that we're speaking to.
Absolutely. And before we were recording, you were telling me that's kind of broadly, you know, leaving Ireland as in there's a I'm sure there's people listening to us now who have plans or if not plans, desires to go overseas. And then, of course, there's the audience that are overseas already who want to come back, the expats themselves.
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Chapter 3: How does residency status affect my tax obligations when moving?
Anybody who comes to Ireland who stays here for three years or longer is automatically ordinary resident, you were saying. Resident before the three years and ordinarily resident afterwards. And then the ordinary resident person has at least the potential to be in the crosshairs of Irish revenue for a period of time, even after they've, you know, got on the boat and left the country.
So would it be right to say that somebody could be, you know, a teacher could be going to Dubai?
Mm-hmm.
And lived there for three years and have a zero tax on their salary in Dubai. But owe the Irish revenue money when they come home.
Yeah, really good question and a really common concern. That specific case you gave, no, it's highly unlikely that there's any issue there. The first reason is because, broadly speaking, the employment income is outside the charge to tax, even if they remain ordinarily resident in Ireland.
So there's specific legislation and reliefs that are designed to prevent Ireland taxing employment income after you've left. And that's a concern. And then a follow on question, you know, when you're talking to that client is, you know, I'm earning a good salary and I'd like to bring it back with me to Ireland to buy a house.
So we navigate that with them and give them the comfort in many cases that that is not taxable if they bring it back. So that's something that people need to be aware of.
So they're there in Dubai, they save a load of money when they're there. And in many circumstances, they can confidently bring that money home and not expect the Irish revenue to be dipping their hand in their pocket.
Yeah, in most cases.
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Chapter 4: What is the difference between residency and ordinary residency?
I mean, I think, you know, while I said to you before we started recording that 96% of our audience are Irish, are based in Ireland, indeed, many of them, I hope, listening to this, will be contemplating leaving.
many of them will know people who've already left who are contemplating coming home and then even some of them amongst the 4% might be people listening to us in far-flung areas and thinking of moving to Ireland so for today Steph thank you very much for coming in I've been delighted to meet you I think, you know, there's no doubt you're providing a service that will resonate with many viewers.
And, you know, I also have no doubt we'll get a bunch of questions now that I didn't ask you. So we might ask you back again another day to answer those questions.
Of course, feel free to send them on to us.
Well, for now, Steph, thanks a lot for today.
Thank you.
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