Local Property Tax
The Finance (Local Property Tax And Other Provisions) (Amendment) Act 2025 has been enacted. The Act requires that householders assess the market value of their property as of 1 November 2025 and establishes five-year valuation cycles thereafter. Liable persons will need to file and submit an updated return by 7 November 2025.
Valuation bands are widened by 20% (reportedly to address concerns around the impact of price inflation). The charge for each band has also been increased, as well as the income threshold for deferral. The exemption for properties with defective blocks has also been expanded.
The property price register is a useful resource for determining the value of a property.
Charities SORP
While still not compulsory in Ireland, many Irish charities voluntarily comply with the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (Charities SORP), which is expected to become compulsory for the larger Irish charities once the remaining sections of the Charity Act 2024 are commenced. See this summary of the changes that the Act will require.
The Charities SORP making body in the UK is considering amendments to the existing SORP to provide sector-specific guidance on leasing and revenue recognition, and other matters of relevance to charities. The proposed changes are listed here.
UK audit supervision
The Financial Reporting Council has published a discussion paper and launched the next phase of engagement on its Future of Audit Supervision Strategy. Read the discussion paper or listen to the podcast. ACCA UK will be responding to the proposals and our response will, in due course, be published at this link.
Sustainability reporting
The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has published revised ESRS Exposure Drafts proposing a simplified set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards, reducing datapoints by 57%.
Proposals include streamlining the double materiality assessment, reducing overlaps across standards, clarifying language and structure, and removing all voluntary disclosures. New relief mechanisms have also been introduced, such as exemptions where reporting would cause undue cost or effort.
EFRAG has reported that the overall length of the standards has been shortened by over 55%. Each of the 12 Exposure Drafts is accompanied by a Log of Amendments, which will make it easier for existing users to identify the changes.
Some SMEs are approaching their external accountant for assistance to make their business more sustainable. ACCA offers a series of guides that can be edited to address specific client concerns.
Companies Act
Many accountants need to refer to the Companies Act on a regular basis and do so by looking up www.Irishstatutebook.ie. However, there are multiple amendments and amendments to amendments from the original text in 2014.
There is a resource at the Law Reform Commission where old legislation is annotated with all subsequent amendments. A version of the Companies Act 2014, updated for the nearly annual updates including statutory instruments is available at Companies Act 2014. Updated anti-money laundering legislation is available at Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010. The Credit Union legislation is at Credit Union Act 1997.
Insurance brokers
Insurance brokers can have multiple different authorisations from the Central Bank, some of which may require a statutory duty report. Practices should check the CBI registers to see which authorisations the broker possesses. The most common are included below:
Registered as an insurance, reinsurance or ancillary insurance intermediary under the European Union (Insurance Distribution) Regulations 2018 (IDR). Statutory duty report not required.
Mortgage Credit Intermediaries authorised pursuant to Section 31(10) of the European Union (Consumer Mortgage Credit Agreement) Regulations 2016 and Section 151A(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1995. Statutory duty report not required.
Authorised as an Investment Business Firm under Section 10 of the Investment Intermediaries Act 1995. Statutory duty report required.
Information checking
It is worth remembering to apply both caution and scepticism when using new technologies. For example, there is a UK-based website that will produce a bank statement in the style of any named Irish, UK or international bank with a specified address and specified lodgements and withdrawals, as well as fake utility bills for any named utility.
Anybody performing customer due diligence (CDD) should be wary of such forgeries. The level of CDD required for a particular client is based on the risk associated with that client and the degree of reliance that can be placed on their identification documents.
Similarly, practitioners should exercise care in defining the search criteria when using artificial intelligence (AI) for research purposes. AI is very good at simple things, like finding sections of the Companies Act, or a precedent or information sheet published on Revenue’s website on a specific tax issue. But for more complex questions, the search criteria needs to specify which country the query refers to and then the references provided need to be checked.
