Read our insights, reports and more

It seems we have been talking about Northern Ireland taking control of its own Corporation Tax regime for years - if not decades. The view is so often espoused that lowering the rate alone could represent the ‘golden ticket’ that would unlock the potential of this place as a destination for international investment.

The year 2022 ended on a low note, a long way from the hopes of a post-pandemic upturn we had at the start of the year. Prospects for 2023, by contrast, look gloomy to say the least, with concerns about another difficult year for the UK economy in which growth is at a standstill, while inflation has reached new heights.

The economy has rolled from punch to punch over the last number of years, prompting a necessarily reactionary approach. 2023 has started with a similarly uncertain outlook.

For many people in organisations the opening months of the year will coincide with objective setting – an opportunity to plan our development goals over the next 12-months and explore what support is available to us at work to help achieve them. As employees set out to complete this process, organisations will also consider their direction within what is still very much an uncertain operating environment.

As we approach the end of the 2022/23 tax year, employers and payroll software providers will be hoping for fewer changes from Government and some stability for 2023/24.

One of the key challenges facing many Irish and UK companies is capturing sufficient D&I insights to inform real change in their organisation. Most of them have good intentions to make changes in D&I, but they face challenges due to a lack of rich data, actionable insights, and the necessary metrics to determine and prove progress.

Northern Ireland’s commercial property market continued at pace in 2022, with £330 million of investment across 36 transactions, according to CBRE NI. Therefore, the importance of getting the VAT treatment on the sale of commercial property correct cannot be overstated.

As we enter a New Year and the memories of our celebrations begin to fade, we will inevitably look to the 12 months ahead to understand how 2023 shapes in terms of work, holidays and finances. To that end Economists are like everyone else, except we will look ahead to what potential challenges and opportunities await the economy. While we will admit this is probably a dull exercise to many, we find this is quite a useful task, which will allow us to confidently advise our clients on how to ‘navigate’ the year ahead.

TEA is a measure of all entrepreneurial activity that is taking place in an economy at any given time. It is calculated by taking the sum of all entrepreneurship-related activities, such as starting a new business, expanding an existing business, and innovating within an existing business. TEA is an important metric for understanding the overall health of an economy, as it provides insight into the level of risk-taking and innovation taking place. High levels of TEA are generally seen as a sign of economic health and prosperity.

We are now well into 2023 and with the corporate world now very much back to business, we can begin to see a picture of what this year might look like from a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) perspective.

The last number of years have presented unique sets of challenges for businesses, whether that be navigating the aftermath of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing energy costs, or spiralling inflation and the associated cost of living crisis. This has led to business leaders making decisions that would have been unheard of a decade ago, and brought with it an ever-increasing level of uncertainty.

It is at this time of the year, that we usually reflect on the year just past, about how we might want to be a better leader or manager at work going forward. For many of us, it does not get beyond the thought process or indeed the first few weeks of January, before we fall back into our old ways of working.

The New Year brings a new penalty regime for VAT, replacing the existing VAT default surcharge regime starting with VAT periods starting on or after 1 January 2023. The new regime aims to create fairer results for taxpayers and this should be well-received by taxpayers, as there was a risk the VAT default surcharge regime could result in significant penalties being issued by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for minor errors in comparison with other taxes.

I took a call from a client recently who suggested my recent articles should come with free Valium. Believe it or not, and despite the best efforts of the Bank of England, UK Government and our own local politicians, I am an optimist.

The Christmas tree is down. The turkey is gone. And new year resolutions have begun. As we kick off 2023 many in business will wonder what 2023 has in store from an M&A perspective. There are wide and varying predictions. Below is a round up of some of the themes.

What is a bot? If you look up the definition in the Oxford dictionary, you would learn that it is “a computer program that runs automated tasks over the internet”. That doesn’t sound so bad on its own, and it isn’t – a program is a tool, a little different in that regard to, say, a hammer. In the right hands, hammers can be used to build all kinds of things, from the mundane to the spectacular, and on the other hand, they can be used to break those things into pieces.