Tax is a necessary evil. If we want to live in a country with access to public services, taxation is the system used to pay for these services. We can (and do!) argue and moan about the different levels of tax payable and whether they are levied fairly. But at the end of the day, the money to be used for public services has to be collected somewhere.

While most people accept that tax must be collected, most people certainly do not want to pay more than their fair share. So as we approach the 31^st October tax payment deadline for individuals (or 10th November if you file through Revenue Online System), we’ve set out 5 ways that can help you to reduce your tax burden either now or in the future. All of these are perfectly legitimate and are not considered aggressive tax practices – they are simply good tax housekeeping that is sometimes ignored.

In financial planning businesses such as our own, a relatively small proportion of our time is spent dealing with the implementation and servicing of financial products on behalf of our clients. Because financial planning is so much deeper than simply putting products in place. 

Instead our clients today come to us with relatively simple questions (that are in fact quite complex) such as "Will we always be ok?" or "Have we enough money?" There's no easy answers to these ones! Because to answer them, we need to know what sort of a life you want to lead, and then we need to put a cost on that life. It's only then that we can start to develop a financial plan to help you achieve that life, help you build a risk appropriate investment portfolio, plan for your retirement and protect yourself if that's what your plan requires. 

But sometimes our clients approach us about other financial challenges they might have, or indeed simply want to bounce ideas off us! We’re delighted to help and give you an opinion if we can. And if we can’t help you directly ourselves, we often know someone who can actually help you.

Here are some of the areas we've been asked about.

According to the Census carried out in 2011, 12% of families in Ireland are now made up of cohabiting couples.  This cohort of our population still faces some unique challenges when it comes to personal finance and inheritance. In this article, we’re going to identify some of the significant issues to be managed, and set out why it is so important for cohabiting couples to get expert financial advice. Not doing so could result in some very expensive tax liabilities down the road!

Small & Medium Enterprises (SME’s) and pensions schemes… they don’t appear too often in the same sentence! Pensions are a real issue for employees working in these small businesses and a headache for their employers. So what is the current situation and what needs to be done?