Hi everyone, this week we've got a special episode for you. On

the 1 February I was featured as a guest on that great

business show with Conal O'Moran, which is a podcast where Conal interviews

irish entrepreneurs and business owners to share their stories and business tips.

Conal is a staple in business podcasts for Ireland and he was kind enough

to let us share the episode with you on tax bytes for expats.

I share some irish tax tips and a little bit of how im planning to

leverage that knowledge for myself this year with a working holiday.

I was also joined by my good friend and fellow business owner, Natalie Garland

Cook, who helps businesses with customer relationship management systems,

or CRMs as theyre known in the trade, and she offers training to get the

most out of it all. The contact details for Conal and Natalie will be in

the show notes as well as the link to subscribe to that great business show

if you like what you hear. Thanks for listening and enjoy.

Welcome to episode 177 of that

great business show, home of great business tips, insights and

opportunities. On it. Free episode delivered in

our commute friendly package. Hi, I'm Conor

la Mora and Fort d'Estier. I'm going to call this episode the Dream

edition because everyone in business has a dream. And

sometimes that dream is about sitting far, far away, maybe somewhere

sunny, where the cost of living along with taxes are low,

which made us wonder, what are the most attractive countries for taxes?

And as always, we bring you the answers. We also have

a top tip on how to make that dream come closer as we have

a product expert with us who has a top tip, always a top

tip with us for making your business massively more

productive. And these two guests, both women, are also a

dream team as the software expert has changed the

tax expert's life, allowing her some time off for

herself. Time to dream maybe. Now here, as I

said, is a different type of a business story, or should I say two stories.

I came across Waterford woman who does the taxes for many,

many expat people and this made me wonder where the most

attractive countries for taxes actually are. And I asked

Stephanie Wickham, founder of Expat Taxes, to

join us to have the chat about her growing business. And it

was in the course of learning about that business that I learned about how

Stephanie's business has been transformed by using a simple

C or M or customer relationship manager management

software that every business should have. Stephanie's

CRM system was implemented by another Waterford based woman,

Natalie Garland Cook, founder of NC and

Co. So why not find out more by having both women

in and see if it's all it's cracked up to be. Stephanie Wickham.

Natalie Garland Cook, welcome to that great business

show. Thank you. Thank you, Carl, for having us. When I heard

story one was transformed by story two, if story

two was so good, maybe we'll get story one to make sure that

story two goes expat and lives happily on

a sunny island somewhere. Stephanie, first of all, thanks for coming. Tell

me about taxes and expat taxes. You

may as well get your business out there, first of all,

just what you do and how you do it and how long you've been doing

and all that kind of good stuff. Yeah, I'd keep it brief, I suppose. At

a very simple level, we are a tax practice that work with

people who are moving to or from Ireland and we simply

solve complex international tax issues for them that stem from the

move. So expat taxes was born about four years ago.

The story is that I had left a role that I

had been in for about three months and started from my

kitchen table as my. You did a runner after three months.

Yeah, good question. I decided working as an employee wasn't for

me. And true entrepreneur, we love them. Yeah.

Just in honesty, you know, I think when you talk about entrepreneurs,

sometimes we allude to the fact that, you know, it's a lightning bolt moment and

you woke up one night and decided you were going to work for yourself. It

doesn't always work out like that, does it? For me, it was essentially pre

Covid and I just noticed there was a gap in the market and it was

meant to be pocket money before I realized it was a. Now it's a

business where we employ six people across and hiring. And

hiring. Yeah, definitely hiring three countries

and two time zones. So it's really grown into something. I

think we tapped into a niche that had demand and it's really

worked for us. And I have deliberately not asked you where the great places for

taxes are because I want to keep people listening. So somewhere along

this little chat, we'll get to that. But they have to keep listening to you,

of course. And that is why that gives me the opportunity to go to

Natalie. Natalie, you transformed. I am told

by Stephanie, Stephanie's business. How well, I

am an independent CRM and ERP consultant. That's

important, the independence part, very important. I'm kind of technology

agnostic, really. So I'm passionate about helping

small, medium and enterprise businesses in making sure

that they make the right selection on a digital journey. A lot of them

are digital transformation. However, Steph was right from the

beginning. She started digitally, so we put in a simple

CRM system that would grow with her. And now it's really

a complete ERP and CRM system

which links to the website, which links to

all the automations, etcetera. And for those, and I'm sure there are

tens if not hundreds of thousands of listeners who will say,

CRM, ERP. What you talking about? Change my

business, make me more profitable. Explain. Yeah, so

CRM, as you mentioned before, customer relationship management,

nobody. People go, what? Huh? Who? But if you say

Salesforce, if you say HubSpot, if you say pipe drive, if you say

Zoho, if you say Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar,

CRM, people start kind of. Oh, yeah, Oracle

SAP, these sort of solutions and software that's out there in

from small companies to the mega companies. That's

what CRM and ERP, enterprise resource

planning software is. What does ERP do? Well, ERP,

it's sort of more the financial side of it then usually

hooks up into a relationship management part of the

software. So really what we're trying to do is make sure that you're

on a journey of understanding your customers,

your suppliers, your stakeholders, across the board.

Plus, if Stephanie has gone on holiday, that one of

her employees can pick up and literally

see what they've been doing, what she's been doing with the client. She's gone

off quickly for a little flight somewhere and they can literally pick up

and deal with the client as if. And it's seamless. It's seamless, yeah.

And again, the listeners will be saying, but hang on a second, that's for

middle sized companies, is it? Or no,

tiny, one person, two persons. Well, I would say if you can start

right from the beginning, great. Which is what Stephanie did. That doesn't

happen. That's very rare, I have to say. And she's my dream client,

basically. I was going to ask you. She's sitting in front of you there, so

you have to say that really, she was your nightmare. She actually

wasn't. Yeah, she wasn't. That's the annoying thing. Paid her to say

that. She really did listen

to me. And you know what, a lot of people don't. And then they come

back to you later and go, I should have done that. But you typically. What

are the big problems that people don't do or what are the big omissions? I

suppose. I think when you're starting. I've started from scratch as well as

an entrepreneur and I've also been in small companies, been the sales and marketing

manager in them. And you know what it's like you're juggling a million different

things. The problem is when you start taking on other people,

that's fine at the beginning because you're communicating, you're talking. Usually you're in a small

office and everyone knows what everyone's doing. But as you grow,

you start duplicating work. I don't think that's a word, but triplicating work,

you start just doing a lot of stuff that somebody else is

doing. If you start with a CRM, which

really should be the brain of the business, you're going to stop that straight

away. You're going to stop the frustration that

employees often have with doing work that somebody else has been doing.

There's so much with it bush usually it's people coming

to me when they're growing rapidly and they're in a bit of a

panic because they don't have one system. They have siloed

themselves into lots of different software that suits sort of

just certain elements of the business, but they haven't

thought of something that's joined up that works altogether, if

that makes sense. Is there any case study that you can think of somebody that

should transform their business? Well, go ahead. She's pointing at

Stephanie. Can I? Yes, of course you can. Stephanie. You don't mind if

she discusses your business? Because, I mean,

obviously, as I said, Steph did start from the beginning.

Yeah. So, yeah, which is

amazing because we spent a lot of time thinking of processes right from

the outset. So what does that mean? You sat down with Steph and you went

through her process? Yes. And then how many people were you

employing at that stage, Stephanie? So just quickly, it

was me. And then I got pregnant with my third son during COVID so things

got crazy. I took on an assistant and then my husband, who's

also a chartered accountant, resigned from his role to come and join. So all of

a sudden we went from it just being little old me to somebody else in

a different country and then my husband in the office with me. So it was

growing quickly. It was hell. It was, to be honest. You mean the husband and

wife? If he's listening, he can give his. He can give us his

thoughts. Phone in. Look, I think as well, you know, to kind of. Because obviously

Natalie had to kind of convince me that this was something worth doing, maybe

because I was a little bit green to it, but for me, the value was

in looking at the processes. The question I always had was, how can we

improve customer experience because of this. And I think that's the

key, that sometimes when you're looking as an SME owner, you know, you're focusing

on making your own life easier. But what if you can make the experience for

the client better? And that's what this has achieved for us. You know, we,

we regularly rate really highly with our clients. That's because we're collecting the right

information, we're monitoring it, we're tracking it, and it's all made

possible because of the work that Natalie did with us at the start. And typically,

what kind of information are you gathering and how do then do you use that?

How do you apply that to make more profits for the business?

So let me give you two real examples. Firstly,

one of the services that we offer is an online tax consultation with a

charter tax advisor. And we're one of the only firms in Ireland that does that.

At the moment, that's invaluable for our clients, who maybe are based in the US

or Australia or the UK. We service clients in over 30 countries

so we can meet with them in an online environment. That booking comes

in via the website. We are paid instantly, it updates

our calendar instantly. They are then via workflows at the

back end of the system, prompted to provide information that we as advisors

need to get. So, for example, we need to verify their identity for anti money

laundering. Now, if you stand back and look at that in

old school or old money, that would have been an assistant with a

typewriter sending a letter and trying to make a diary appointment.

So instantly you have taken away the individual while making the client feel

that they're still getting a personal service and it's being automated, all from one

central interface that's really powerful and

that's one part of it. The next step is then the client has a consultation,

they get some fantastic advice, they save lots of money, they need a tax return.

Now, looking inside the tax return process, it

looks like a tax return is just a form. And I think my husband, who

works in the compliance side of the business, says he counted that there can sometimes

be nearly 50 interactions with the client before we get to

the final process. I mean, that's an extreme

case. Think about how each of those interactions needs to

be monitored and managed. And the CRM is helping you do that,

because what we need as tax advisors, particularly when we're working in the compliance space,

is real data quickly, because nobody wants to wait to hear what their tax

bill is. They want to have control over it. So really, what does that look

like? For us, it allows us to have very productive meetings once a

week where we have a really good snapshot of what's in house. I've worked in

big four firms where they have struggled with this. The volume of

information that we deal with is vast. And this

relatively simple CRM helps us do it.

In honesty, the testament to it is that we now are being approached by accountants

and tax advisors who are asking us to help them replicate the system

that we have built with Natalie's help. So it shouldn't be

underestimated. This puts money in our pockets and time back in our calendar world.

I'm delighted that you said putting money in your pocket, because obviously

this has a cost. How much do these systems cost?

Well, depending on what CRM you go for, it's from

like 45 euro per user per

month, up to 250 euro per user per

month, and even maybe more than that, depending on the. How would the difference be

between, say 45 and 250, depending. A lot of it's the platform.

So if you go for a platform like Soho, which

is known as an SME and lower cost CRM

and ERP system, however, it's copying the big

boys, so it's doing a very good job. But then you're talking about

then the sales forces and the hubspots, which are also absolutely phenomenal.

Phenomenal. Can't say that word and, you know, tip top. But

you're paying the big books for them then. And usually then also

consultants. So I would help clients ensure that they're

getting the best CRM that suits their

requirements, because there's not one CRM that fits all,

really. I mean, the one that says they do dynamics

and Salesforce, they do. But there's a lot of

plugins and all sorts of stuff for that, and it costs heavily and

I'm not putting them down because they are needed in big enterprise companies. But for

smaller companies, you don't often need to spend as much money as you

possibly think you do. And a cost benefit analysis, have you ever done

that? So say take a number that you are spending 70 quid

a month per person to get a really good system. And

the kind of savings. Did you ever measure savings for anybody? Have you ever looked

at. Weve done a little bit of measurement on

stephanies and then on a company I used to work with before

I set out on my own, I was the sales and marketing manager. Ive been

going back years in a couple of different companies, but in the previous

company that I was working with before I set up on my own, we didn't

have a CRM system. When I walked into that job and we were

delivering to high end pharmaceuticals, high end niche

equipment to pharmaceuticals, and I had come from a

place where we use CRM. I mean, it was literally my brain. I couldn't live

without it to come into nothing. So I measured

that. It was one of my projects was I implemented that within the

first year and our sales increased by

70%. In case

there's any misunderstanding, that's the sales

increases. But then can you cut numbers as well

as in. We've already talked about sending out letters,

etcetera, that all disappears, so people

go off and do something more productive. Have you ever measured

what you might have? It might have cost you in terms of

humans or. I think that's a very good question and it's maybe not the easiest

one to answer, because I think it depends on the task. Let me give you

an example of something that actually blew my husband's mind the

other day. So he's trained as a chartered accountant, he's worked in commercial roles

in big multinationals. We had to send out a tax questionnaire

to over 120 people. And he said to me, can you

come and help me do this? So we had. Obviously, the fields in the CRM

were correctly populated. That's key. Your data, the output is as good as what you

put in, but that's. Your work now, is it? Or is that done by the

software? That is, it's the team's work. So I

suppose it's like any data set. Rubbish in,

rubbish out. So it is important that there's a commitment across the team.

Bear in mind, we advertise ourselves as an online digital practice. We

recruit people who are. I've got one team member who I'll actually

mention, Fergal. He's excellent. All the team are excellent with process, but he's very

process driven. So as a team, we are very focused on what can we do

better? How can we make this better? We had to send this email. I

said to Brian, watch this. Literally, it took us 15

seconds to send an email to 120 people.

Not only was the email sent, as soon as they clicked it, another field

in the CRM was going to update, so we could see that they'd read the

email. And in addition to that, the system was set to send an

automatic reminder seven days after they've opened the email.

And that would take however many hours if you were sitting trying to do it

yourself. So that's a simple mail merge example. But the point

is, I would quantify the cost saving there to be in the

region of probably 1000 euro for that one engagement. That happens once a

year and that happens numerous times. So I

think it's difficult depending on the task for us. The business has

grown exponentially by over 400% in the last four

years. And I do really put that down to the

commitment that we've had to process improvement and the solid foundation

from which we've grown. And I genuinely mean that. I've worked in big four

large multinational companies. It's easy to take for granted

that even the big boys don't do this. You know, that's easy to take for

granted. So think big even though you're small and you

really will reap the rewards. Does it, do they, these systems,

do they help on sales at all? Sales leads and stuff like that? Oh absolutely,

yes. CRM actually was built with that intentionally back in the

eighties and nineties. It was developed gold mine act where some of

the ones, maybe some of the people who've been in sales for years will know

like myself and yeah, totally

pipeline driven, lead driven opportunities.

What percentage are they in a specific stage that is the core

of CRM. But obviously it's developed and grown. They're all

on their cloud based, a lot of them now. And they're given so

much more. They're not just about, they're not just customer centric,

although that's still at the heart. But they are managing all these other things

and supporting the internal teams. And why

I love talking about Stephanie and Xpactases is because they were really

committed to the process of it because it's still work to

do. Like I can come in and say this will work. We've got to still

design a system that's going to work for that particular

industry. And some people want to just magic wand it all

to happen within a day and that doesn't happen. Talking

about a lot of my clients who just think yeah, that's what I want, then

do that. But they have to put the work. In like really

fair. Is that a fair warning? Is you can put your money in but then

you have to put some work into. You have to put some work in. Yeah,

but it's obviously the future now. What businesses

or industries or sectors is it absolutely

ideal for? We've obviously heard the financial end. What other

ones are taking it up in a big way in the small SME's now not

to. Well obviously CRM covers all sectors and it's

always out there from banks to whatever health and

wellness. I tend to be doing a lot of work in the engineering

space and have put in a number of different CRM systems

that supported them on their project. So lots of different

types of engineering companies as well. Construction engineering,

like the Kirby Group, are one of the largest electronic

construction companies in Ireland and they're working a lot with

data centers at the moment. And then I've worked with a couple of really

cool small startups that have been EI backed that are

now just phenomenal. They're growing massively, like ARQ in Cork,

plant quest in Washford. What sectors are they in? They

are engineering again. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But again, they're

digitally bringing something new to the world within engineering.

You mentioned Stephanie's electric car earlier.

One of the concerns about anybody buying an electric car at the moment is that,

oh, listen, next year it's going to be even better. The distance that will go

will double up or something. CRMs presumably are

certainly in the middle of the whole AI area,

therefore to commit now is that can you

fix it once it's in or upgrade? It's growing with you.

It's growing. So that's one good thing about if you go with these big

boys with HubSpot, with Salesforce, with

Zoho, with dynamics there, as they

provide you with the updates as they're going now, sometimes I get a bit

frustrated because they don't tell you about the updates and something can switch off in

the background and there's a bit of work. But usually, yeah, no,

AI is humongous, a little bit scary. It's

so smart. But with CRM, it's still

early days, but I envision within a few years that we will be

talking to it and telling it what to do in our cars and stuff. I

love the idea that, you know what, we're going to take a quick break because

we are commercially driven ourselves. So we better have a

word from our advertisers. That great business

show. And I am here with Stephanie

Wickham, who is the founder of Expattaxes ie,

and Natalie Garland Cook. That's a great name. Founder of

NC and Co. And we are talking. We're going to get

to the meet now, Stephanie, where this is what everybody's waiting for,

the tax places that we should all know

about. In other words, where should I go if I have a few quid that

I don't have to pay a lot of tax, but it's still

doable. I don't know if you're going to love this answer, but I'm going to

give you the honest one. It depends it depends on lots of

things. So I think what we've seen post Covid is

a shift in maybe the questions that people

ask. During COVID it became very common for people to work

remotely for their employer, and that forms a big cohort of

people that we would work with. So a lot of clients from the US

who maybe have decided to come to Ireland and work remotely for their us

employer. And then equally from that, we have a lot of irish based employees who've

decided to go and maybe live and work in places like Portugal. Portugal is a

very popular place for irish people to go, and there can be some really

nice tax outcomes. There's a regime that we're quite familiar

with because we work quite closely with a portuguese tax advisor. It

was changed recently. It's not as favorable as it was. It changed at the beginning

of the year, if you were right, because there was a change of government, if

I. Remember, and it caught everybody by surprise. So the non habitual

residency scheme is what it's called, NHR, for anybody who wants to google

it. And that scheme is designed to incentivize people

who want to go and live and work in Portugal if they meet certain conditions.

And I want to cut across you there, because you are in this

business. And I listen and watch people who don't know a lot

about business, but who do not seem to realize that people,

many hundreds, thousands of people move around because

we now can, and they will work remotely

and they will move for tax, favorable tax treatment.

You're looking as if I have revealed something there. No, you're just saying,

yeah, I mean, grow up, find out. Yeah, 100%. And

I think when we work with clients, so obviously we would advise on the irish

consequences. And usually the question comes, is it possible for me to leave

the irish tax system legitimately? What does that look like? How

long do I need to be gone for? I think it's quite important, and I

usually explain to clients, this is not necessarily going to

be a quick four month, five month period you're going to spend in a

sunny destination and all your tax problems are gone away. More

complicated than that. I think the first question we would normally ask is, where would

you like to go? So where we see people, sunshine. I

know Portugal is a very popular one and has the NHR scheme.

We've got clients who might go to Spain. Italy has some preferable tax

treatment, as far as I'm aware, some of the eastern european countries. And then

what's quite common, the two main places for us would be Portugal, and then the

Middle east, so the UAE, it's no surprise it's tax free

currently for individuals. A lot of Irish might go over

there to set up a business, work for there for a period of

time. And it's interesting because oftentimes at the

moment, I get a lot of questions from clients, usually two cohorts.

The first are a subset who have built up successful irish

businesses and have decided that they're going to retire and they'd like to do so

overseas. The second cohort are the people who can't get on

to the housing market in Ireland, because just in the too hard basket,

let's go overseas, work for three or four years, come back with a nice amount

of money that we can now buy a house outright. And, you know, there's

outliers from those two groups, but there's generally that cohort. And the

planning for both those groups can look quite different. The Revenue commissioners are a

smart bunch of people, and the legislation is drafted in such a way as

to ensure that there is definitely a breaking of a connection with

Ireland. To achieve these things, it has to be done in quite a specific

way. You know, it's. I've had a euro for every

time someone says to me, oh, but I'm not a resident of Ireland unless I

have 183 days, without getting overly technical residencies

measured by that test. Yes, but it's also measured with reference to

280 days over the course of two years. And therefore.

Sorry, what does that mean? Now, in simple English, basically four and

a half months this year. Four and a half months next year would be enough

to make you a resident of Ireland next year. In addition to that, to make

you. A non resident or resident resident. Okay, see, so instantly, now you

say to me, I'm going to leave Ireland in October. Now let's count the days

next year. Well, you've already got 280 days next year. Now, there's a workaround

where if you have less than 30 days in the country, you can't be resident.

But my point is not to necessarily educate listeners how to

plan for their residency, because that should always be done in conjunction with a qualified

advisor. The point is this. It needs to be done with an eye on

the detail, because that's where the planning comes in. So a lot of these

schemes, I mean, I did some work with a client recently who we went through

a lot of detailed work, and then he just decided, this is difficult. It's not

for me. Why? For him, it was down to the

corporate structure he had. Breaking the link with

Ireland was not possible. For him. And there was some structuring that

had been done previously that we were going to have to unwind, wasn't giving him

the tax outcome he'd anticipated. So I think

oftentimes because, you know, I'm ambitiously lazy, we all like to

distill things into simple terms. Clients want you to give it to them between

the eyes, and we try to do that. So our tagline is complex,

taxes explained simply, but we should never underestimate the value of

painting a picture. And I know we were chatting previously, and I was saying to

you that one of the things I tried to do, having spoken to over

2000 people now on their taxes in a raft of different types of

scenarios, is, what are you trying to achieve? I could put an

extra 15,000 euro in your pocket, but is that worth not being able to

come back and see your granny at Christmas for the next three years? And often

when you start asking people questions like that, they go, oh, okay, yeah, this is,

this is a life decision I'm making. There's tax benefits, but am I

willing to actually take action? Sometimes they are, and it works

fantastically. And we've seen some fantastic tax outcomes where people can

decide they want to live overseas, and there could well be a positive tax outcome

that goes with it if they're aware of their ability to take advantage of those.

And one of the things that people will want if they're parents is to

educate their kids in Ireland. And is that possible to do while you're still

living offshore? Oh, I'm not too sure how many digital online

schools there are. Do you understand? What I'm saying is that once the

kids are here, daddy or mammy are still deemed to be offshore. If there's over

in Portugal or something, are they? Well, I suppose where we would see it is

families leaving. So I think as well, where we do

run into problems is, without getting overly technical on it, is people

will say, I had a call with a client the other day and they wanted

to spend winter in Portugal, summer in Ireland, and we just weren't getting

to the tax outcomes that they wanted because they weren't gone from Ireland for long

enough. They had too much of a connection here. So the tax treaties are, you

know, there's lots of fallacies. Oh, you can only pay tax in one place. That's

not correct. And you can only be tax resident in one country. That's not

correct. You know, it really is down to the circumstances.

But look, we've seen successful irish entrepreneurs who have

their own companies leave Ireland you know, liquidate an irish

company, set up business outside of Ireland, and potentially run an

international or global business outside of Ireland. Equally, we have

lots of clients who are moving to Ireland. Tell me about them. This is kind

of news to me, but it's interesting. Oh, look, looked at the

CSO website, 141,000 people moved to

Ireland last year. We are in a net immigration position

overall, and I love working with these clients

because we have a podcast ourselves, which we interviewed called,

you better share tax spice for expats, where we, you know, we talk

about tax topics, but we also talk to people about the story, because everybody has

a story, and a lot of us individuals in particular, and

UK to some extent, they have a connection to Ireland, even if

they weren't born and raised here. They come to Ireland with

overseas pensions, overseas investments. They have a lot of cash

most of the time because maybe there are a stage of life where they've built

it up and they want to live in Ireland because this is where they see

themselves. But they need to navigate. Well, how do the Revenue

commissioners view that? So we work with a lot of those individuals to help

them come and live in Ireland, have the lifestyle they want without the nasty tax

cost at the end of it. And I can't stress enough how the tax can

bite if it's not done properly. So it's really important that they take advice at

the right time in that journey. And coming from, say, the states to

here, what about all the citizenships or all those kind of issues? Is that all

very complicated or. That's a really good question. So I suppose from a tax

perspective, the difficulty for a us citizen, and you don't need to

educate most of them because they're very aware of this, is that as us citizens,

they're taxed on worldwide income regardless of where they are in the world states.

Correct? In honesty, that rarely causes many issues from an irish

tax perspective, because when they're living and working here, they usually end up paying irish

taxes. I explain it to people like this. If you've got 100

euro and you're a us citizen, chances are that your overall

tax rate, if you're in Ireland, is going to be, let's say, 30%. For the

sake of the discussion, the IR's might take 10% of it and the revenue

commissioners are going to take a remaining 20. You've walked away from the transaction having

lost 30. You don't really care which government gets it. That's not exactly how

it works in every case, but it's a good analogy. So from a tax perspective,

the citizenship bites like that. I think your question is also in the nature

of immigration. Yes. So again, the area we

work in, while niche is of itself segmented, we don't provide

immigration advice. A lot of us clients, they can apply for

citizenship maybe because they're married to an Irish person or they have a

descendant who is a granny rule. Their granny rule. Yeah.

But we love working with us and we have a lot of uk clients,

Australia, and lots in between. Now, I did say this is the

dream edition, because if you want to dream about going to somewhere and

sitting on a lovely beach or whatever, you

need a load of cash, though. Sorry, you need. There's no point trying to do

this on 50 grand a year, is there? When does it really kick in to

make sense? You see, if we were having a consult, I would say to you,

why? What's your driver here? And if you said to me, well,

I've dreamt of this all my life. Well, that's a different thing. Okay, that's

hard. Exactly.

Cash notes. Okay, well, let's put it this way. Okay, so let's

say. So my first question is, where does the 50k come from? And then you

say, well, it comes from perhaps unemployment with an

irish company or a foreign company, it doesn't really matter. And then we say,

okay, well, non residency for you could be triggered because you've had x number of

days outside of the country, and you say, that's perfect, I'm not going to be

a resident. And then there's an irish tax is a piece of legislation, section 821

of the tax acts, that says that if you spend, if you're a non resident,

that employment income is not taxable in Ireland insofar as you don't perform any of

the work here. Now that's game changing, because all of a sudden you've just gone

from probably a 15% tax rate on 50k, depending on your tax

credits, to zero from an irish perspective. Now, the corollary of

that is, what's the tax rate in the jurisdiction you go to? And this is

where oftentimes when people will contact us and say, can you give me the

irish and the US advice? And unfortunately, the answer is

no. I'm not really aware of very many people globally who

specialize in two jurisdictions. Why? Well, you'd

be a busy person trying to study a second. And as well as that, there's

just so many different nuances. So there's always somebody on the other side to answer

the question about. Well, if you're going to, let's say, Kiribati, and

there's a 0% tax rate there. You're happy if you go to somewhere like

Norway, where social insurances and income taxes higher. Well, now, your move

hasn't been tax efficient. It's about an aligned approach and trying to figure

out whether or not you really want to live in Norway and is it worth

it for the amount of money you're going to save, if any at all? And

here's a loaded question. Have you considered doing this

yourself? It's a very loaded question. We are. We are going to do

it. So we are going to go to Thailand for two months. And,

you know, I think as an entrepreneur, you put a lot into your

business, don't you? You really do. And just to kind of hark back to

what Natalie was saying, we now have an online practice. We're digital,

we're remote, and if we hadn't implemented this system, I don't think we'd

be able to go to Thailand. So there are tax advantages to going to some

jurisdictions, Thailand being one of them. Spill the beans.

Well, I suppose one of the commonly missed

reliefs that clients are very happy to hear about is foreign

earnings deduction. For anybody who wants to do some research themselves, I always recommend

you do it in conjunction with a suitably qualified advisor. Please Google

TDM foreign earnings deduction and you'll find revenue's guidance

notes which set out in certain circumstances, when an employee goes to

work in certain countries, there can be a nice little tax saving to be had,

depending on the number of days you have in that location. When you're talking about

revenue, you're talking. About our revenue, our revenue commissioners. Because, you

know, think about taxes. We were talking about this earlier.

Ireland is a poster child for low corporate tax rate, but there's no

one writing articles about how good the income tax rate's here. We all know, looking

at our pay slip, that the revenue commissioners take a fairly big slice of the

pie. So income tax efficiency

is usually first and foremost in most entrepreneurs mind. How can

I pay less tax? There's lots of ways you can do it and you don't

have to leave the island, but if you're willing to go and work and live

overseas, there can be other ways to do it and achieve a nice little outcome.

And when or how did you decide on Thailand? Obviously there are the benefits, but

you also have to go there, set up there, work for eight weeks

or whatever long you're going to be there. And you've got kids. Remember, I've got

three young children. So I relocated with my

husband to Australia in 2011 and worked for KPMG in their global

mobility sector. And on the way we spent four months backpacking around Asia.

We spent time in Thailand and it struck me as a place with a very

good healthcare system. So I know it's a boring answer, but it was the healthcare

system that I thought, if anything happens with the kids, we're in a country

where we can go to a hospital and they'll get good care compared to

other countries on the list. Maybe in sub saharan Africa,

you know, no disrespect to them, but perhaps the healthcare system wouldn't have

been what we needed in the event of emergency. This is great advice. I'm going

to stay here now. Yeah, exactly. There's a couple of hundred

thousand quid worth of advice. I know I've sent you my invoice.

Afterwards, so it is doable

and you should really have the chat about it because you don't need a wally

cash. You've just told me you don't. You don't. And you know, just

remember, even if people are listening to this and they have no intention of getting

on the plane, revenue right now are actually

campaigning to incentivize pay as you earn employees to go and claim

their tax credits. That's right. You're very simply, how many rent tax

credits are left on the table? How many medical insurance tax credits do people not

claim? Home care tax credits? We generally can save our

clients, you know, three or 4000 euro in most instances, just

by a quick chat and incentivizing them to take action. It's

really worth it. Natalie, you're on to steph almost every day, I

would imagine. How come you haven't moved off again? I

need to. Actually, I was just thinking, why am I not going to Thailand this

summer? Maybe you could go off together. Here you go. We'll go take over the

world in Thailand. Why not? Sounds good to me. We have a

final question that you're all aware of. Yes. Because we

made sure. And I'll start with you. Natalie is

who would you hire in a heartbeat. Okay. Well,

when I was thinking about this, I have four

people that I know of that I worked with over the

years that I would hire in a heartbeat. I don't want to say their names

because I don't want to embarrass all the other beautiful people that I've worked with

over the years. But they're four people who are your key players. No, but I

just can't. But they know who they are and I'm going to give them a

text as well. But my. I send a text to 20 people

now.

21. But, yeah,

I was thinking about this, actually. It would be aisling

bee. Aisling bee. No, she would have not one

iota of an interest in coming into a business.

However, because she is my ideal. She is busy as

a comedian actress. Oh, my. Jeez. Work with

me, work with me. That was dad

joking. Sorry. She

is busy and she's amazing, but I actually think, you know, she can put her

mind to anything. Plus, you just have great crack, wouldn't you,

working with her? Well, that's the point, is that a few people have said comedians,

and I kind of agree. I mean, if you are going to have to work,

you may as well have a laugh. Yeah, absolutely. But she's got that in her

town. How are you going to get on a tour? How will I get to

her? Well, I'm hoping you'll tag her at the end of this

and we'll make. Sure that she hears from me and she'll probably give you buzz.

Oh, wow. Buzz be.

And what about you, Stephanie? Who would you hire? A heartbeat. That's

a really hard question, isn't it? I thought about this over the weekend and I.

You changed your mind as well. I did, didn't I? I'm not. That's why I

was sure. Yeah. That you had heard. Yeah. Mary

Portis, she's brilliant. The queen of shops, lover, you

know, pity. She used to be on tv an awful lot and she made an

awful lot of sense when she was teaching people about retail. Yeah. And then

she was. What? She's no longer on tv that I'm aware of. I don't think

she is. I know she's still active and she has an agency. You know what

I love about her is transformation is her signature move, and

I love that. And coming back to what I said, for me,

what's been really important about this journey in the business is focusing

on what the client wants, because we can sit all day and talk about the

technical, we can talk about how we do it, but if you're not meeting the

need of the client in the way that they want, you failed.

And I think that she would fit right in because she's a mover and shaker

and she knows nothing about tax. She's a retail expert. I don't have a window

display, but she'd make it pretty if I did. I'd love her. I'd love her

in the business. I'd love if she gave you a buzz and said, I know

all about tax, I bet you she's there. She's a smart cookie. She probably knows

a lot about tax. I'm sure she does. If she's listening, we are

hiring. I'll overlook the fact that you need to be tax qualified.

That's lovely. I'd love to have a chat with her because of any time I've

ever seen her, she really is just top of the game. Guess what? That's the

end. I'm sorry about that. That was a lovely Charlie. Thank you, Colonel.

But best of luck to both of you. And listen, if you need a bike

carrier, I know that Natalie's. No, I'm doing that.

Well, I'll flap the wings or something.

Okay. That sounds absolutely gorgeous and great advice. Thank you. And thank you so

much again. Also, Natalie. Natalie Garland Cook. Great name.

Thank you very much. Of N. C and co. That'll be

Natalie Cook and Coridy consulting. And if you

want Stephanie and Stephanie's advice, go to expat taxes,

ie. Yes, you'll find us there. Yeah. Fantastic. Lovely. Love that.

Thank you so much. That is it from episode 177 of that great business

show, great business insights. We've just heard them. And inspiration. I hope so.

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