What a company files in Ireland [IE]

Every company on the register owes an annual return, whether or not it traded. The date it is made up to is the company's Annual Return Date (ARD), which is derived from the date of incorporation, not from the financial year: «A company's first annual return is made up to the date which is 6 months post-incorporation, no financial statements attached», and the registrar's leaflet states the recurring rule as «The ARD in any year is the anniversary of the ARD in the previous year unless the company changes it». So the first return is a bare return and every later one carries financial statements. The ARD can be moved: Form B1B73 nominates a later ARD, costs 20 euro, must be filed within 56 days of the existing ARD, and may be used «not more than once in every five years»; once a new ARD is nominated, financial statements are required with the returns that follow. Filing has been mandatory electronic since June 2017. This record is the one for an Irish-registered company; a branch or external company registered under a different part of the Act is on a different regime and the six-month figure must not be carried across to it.

Extensions and exceptions: There is no extension of the filing deadline as such, but two mechanisms move the date the clock starts from. Form B1B73 nominates a later Annual Return Date (20 euro, within 56 days of the existing ARD, not more than once in every five years). Form B83 (15 euro) moves the financial year end, which does not move the ARD but changes which financial statements the return must carry. A District Court or High Court application to extend the time for filing exists under the Companies Act but was not read at the primary publisher and is therefore not described here.

The CRO fee schedule lists the Annual Return Form B1 at 20 euro, whether filed through secretarial software or through the online form; there is no paper option. Form B1B73 (nomination of a new annual return date) is also 20 euro, online only, and Form B83 (change of financial year end) is 15 euro. These are registry fees only and exclude the cost of preparing or auditing the financial statements.

An audit is the default; the exemption is what has to be earned, and it has three separate conditions. First, size — the registrar lists the small-company criteria as «Balance sheet total does not exceed 7.5m euro», «Turnover does not exceed 15m euro» and «Number of employees does not exceed 50», of which the company must meet two of three «in respect of that year and the financial year immediately preceding that year». The turnover figure is what the threshold field above carries, but it is only one of three tests and a company under 15m euro of turnover can still need an audit on the balance-sheet or headcount test. These figures are current ones: S.I. No. 301 of 2024 raised small-company turnover from 12m to 15m euro and the balance-sheet total from 6m to 7.5m euro (and micro-company turnover from 700,000 to 900,000 euro, balance sheet from 350,000 to 450,000 euro), for «each financial year beginning on or after 1 January 2024» or, at the company's election, on or after 1 January 2023. The employee number was not changed by that instrument. Second, class — the company «must not come within any of the 18 classes of companies listed in the Fifth Schedule», and public limited companies, public unlimited companies, investment companies, credit institutions and insurance undertakings cannot avail of the exemption whatever their size. Third, timeliness — «the company's annual return, to which Financial Statements are attached, must be filed on time».

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

Every company within the charge to Irish corporation tax files a Form CT1 for each accounting period, and the return and the payment share one deadline: «A company must file its return, and pay any tax due, nine months after the end of the accounting period.» The clock here is the accounting period, not the Annual Return Date, so a company's CT1 deadline and its CRO deadline generally fall in different months and must be tracked separately. Filing is electronic: «A company must use the Revenue Online Service (ROS) to file its return and pay any tax due under Mandatory e-Filing.» The day within the ninth month depends on how the company files and pays — the 23rd for a company using ROS, the 21st for one that fails to pay and file electronically.

Extensions and exceptions: There is no application-based extension. The 23rd rather than the 21st of the ninth month is itself the concession for paying and filing through ROS: «The company must make this payment on, or before, the 23rd of the ninth month», while «Companies that fail to pay and file electronically ... must pay this tax on, or before, the 21st of the month.» This record carries the 23rd, the ROS date, because electronic filing is mandatory for companies.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

This is the obligation most easily missed, because it falls due before the accounting period it relates to has ended and long before the CT1 is prepared. Two regimes apply. A small company — one with «a CT liability of less than 200,000 euro in their previous accounting period» — pays in one instalment «31 days before the end of their accounting period, and before the 23rd of that month». A large company with an accounting period longer than seven months pays twice: on «the 23rd of the sixth month», either «50% of the CT liability for the previous accounting period» or «45% of the CT liability for the current accounting period», and on «the 23rd of the eleventh month» enough to bring preliminary tax to «90% of the final tax due for the current accounting period». A large company with a period of seven months or less pays «90% of the preliminary tax in one instalment». The 200,000 euro figure is the dividing line between the two regimes, not a threshold below which nothing is owed.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

Revenue states the trigger simply — «Value-Added Tax (VAT) registration is obligatory when your annual turnover exceeds the VAT thresholds» — and «you must register for VAT if you are an accountable person», while «Traders whose turnover is below the VAT thresholds, farmers and sea fishers are not generally obliged to register for VAT». There is no single threshold: Revenue's published list gives 42,500 euro «in the case of persons supplying services only»; 42,500 euro for persons supplying goods at reduced or standard rates manufactured from zero-rated materials; 85,000 euro «for persons supplying goods»; 85,000 euro «for persons supplying both goods and services where 90% or more of the turnover is from the supplies of goods»; 10,000 euro for «taxable persons making mail-order or intra-Community distance sales of goods and cross-border Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Electronic (TBE) services into the State»; and 41,000 euro for «persons making acquisitions from other EU Member States». The threshold field above carries the services figure, the one that binds a typical service company; a goods business is tested against 85,000 euro and a distance seller against 10,000 euro. The period over which turnover is measured, and whether the obligation bites on exceeding or on being likely to exceed, are set by the VAT Consolidation Act and could not be read from Revenue's threshold page, so this record does not state them.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

The obligation falls on relevant entities: «All relevant entities are required to file data with the central register of beneficial ownership», with an exemption for companies listed on a regulated market that are already subject to adequate transparency disclosure requirements. Unlike some registers, the Irish one has no annual confirmation: this record is included because a beneficial ownership filing is owed by every entity, but it is event-driven throughout. The first filing is due within five months of incorporation — «A newly incorporated entity has 5 months from incorporation in which to register its beneficial ownership with the RBO» — and after that the entity files only when something changes, within 14 days of the change. An entity that has filed and whose ownership has not changed owes nothing in a given year, so no annual reminder should be generated for it. This is the point where Ireland differs from jurisdictions where the beneficial-owner data is reconfirmed with the annual accounts, and carrying an annual duty across from one of those would be wrong.

Extensions and exceptions: No extension is published. The five-month period applies to the first filing only; a later change to the beneficial ownership data must be filed within 14 days of the change, which is an event obligation with no waiting period and is recorded here in the text rather than as a second deadline.