# Can a UK business operating in Ireland get an Irish VAT number



## stephcie (26 Aug 2014)

Hi I am a partner in a UK registered Ltd company and am bringing the manufacturing element and some training courses to Ireland.  I am debating whether to form a new independent subsidiary in Ireland  or to establish a 'branch' .  We need to register for VAT in Ireland for our manufacturing purposes (about 30% of our product will also be sold to irish businesses, with rest selling in the UK and europe) for the training end of things we want to avail of the VAT exempt status on training courses, as at present any courses we run in Ireland incur UK VAT of 20% as they are being invoiced via our UK company.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated in respect of this issue as I have researched it so much, I have just confused myself.  So if I opt to register a branch in Ireland can that branch register for VAT or should I just go the full hog and register the subsidiary? 

TIA


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## Rudolf289 (27 Aug 2014)

Good morning. Yes, you are able to register as a UK company for VAT in Ireland. I have clients that have shipments arriving in Ireland and we clear on their Irish VAT registration. Have a look at this link ; http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/index.html

Cheers,
Rudolf289


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## dublin66 (31 Aug 2014)

My experience of this is that it will take you a while to obtain a vat number. There are a lot of background checks that are performed before a vat number is granted. Where there is no directors, shareholders, addresses in Ireland you will be asked to provide a lot of additional information.

This is notwithstanding the fact that you may be required to register in Ireland under Irish law. There is a new form for foreign companies TR2 (FT) and it is available here


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## capnhand (1 Sep 2014)

As the above poster said, there can be difficulty in registering a foreign entity for VAT especially where it is apparent that the company is simply a brass plate operation. The revenue have become a lot more difficult on this issue over the last few months and can become intractably suspicious if things that you tell them do not add up.

You need to demonstrate that you are actually planning to have a physical presence in Ireland and not just selling into Ireland from the UK. As you mentioned that you will be moving some of the manufacturing element to Ireland this would need to be apparent. For example, proper storage and manufacturing facilities for such an operation has been acquired or rented, staff taken on etc. You should probably put this in place first and then apply for a VAT number.

It would be easier and simpler to set it up as an Irish subsidiary rather then a branch from the UK. You could set it up as a branch of the UK but then you would have to apportion the profits between the two countries and as the UK company is resident in UK all income will be subject to the higher rate of UK corporation tax.

capnhand


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