Accountants for Irish startups

Get the structure right before you need it to be

The decisions made in the first fortnight are the ones that cost most to reverse. Transferring shares once the company has value can trigger stamp duty and capital gains tax on a split that would have cost nothing to set correctly at incorporation.

• Agree the founder split before you file, and put a shareholders' agreement in place covering what happens if someone leaves.
• Leave room in the cap table for an option pool and for investors, rather than issuing everything on day one.
• Consider founder share vesting. Investors will ask, and retrofitting it is harder than starting with it.
• Keep the company's money in the company's account. Founder drawings that are not salary or dividends become a director's loan with tax charges attached.

Every hour spent tidying a cap table during a raise is an hour of leverage lost. Diligence is not the time to discover the structure is wrong.

The reliefs Irish startups leave on the table

R&D tax credit, 35% and repayable in cash

Worth 35% of qualifying expenditure after the increase announced in Budget 2026, and repayable even where the company has no corporation tax liability — which is the situation most startups are in. It sits on top of the ordinary deduction for the same costs.

The claim must be made within twelve months of the end of the accounting period. That deadline, not eligibility, is why most startups that qualify never claim. The first-year payment threshold rose to €87,500, so smaller claims can be paid in full immediately rather than across three years.

Section 486C start-up relief

Can reduce or eliminate corporation tax for a new trading company's first five years, capped by reference to the employer PRSI paid on its employees. Worth establishing eligibility in year one rather than discovering it in year four.

EIIS, and SURE for the founder

EIIS gives investors income tax relief on qualifying investments, which materially changes what you can raise and on what terms. Separately, Start-Up Refunds for Entrepreneurs can refund income tax already paid by a founder who left employment to start the company — based on the PAYE they paid in prior years.

What investors will ask to see

1. 1Clean historical bookkeeping from the first transaction, not reconstructed later.
2. 2Monthly management accounts with commentary, not a profit and loss printed from the software.
3. 3A financial model with defensible assumptions, showing runway and the point at which you next need money.
4. 4A clean cap table with every issuance and transfer documented.
5. 5Evidence of tax compliance — registrations in place, returns filed, nothing outstanding.
6. 6Employment status handled properly for anyone engaged as a contractor.

Hiring, and the status question

Startups engage a lot of people as contractors, and Ireland's employment status rules were reshaped by the Supreme Court's 2023 Karshan decision. Where an arrangement is found to be employment in substance, the liability for the PAYE that should have been operated falls on the engaging business — you.

This is one of the more common and more expensive findings in early-stage due diligence, and it is entirely avoidable with the contracts reviewed up front.

What it costs

A fixed monthly fee that starts small and scales as you do. Pre-revenue companies pay for compliance and bookkeeping; once there is a raise, a board or a payroll, the reporting scales up. Formation and R&D claim work are quoted separately as one-off pieces.