Budget 2004 contained few shocks for corporate Northern Ireland: that does not mean that everything in the garden is rosy.
Local business will be concerned at the delay in introducing new audit thresholds in Northern Ireland - in effect, defining the size of a business. The new rules have not yet been introduced here, but have been operating in Great Britain since January this year.
This puts local companies at a disadvantage, including a heavier administrative burden on companies, which, if they were based in GB, would be exempt.
It also means that tax deductions on new plant and machinery (now increased to 50% for small companies) are not available to as many Northern Ireland companies because they remain defined as large as opposed to SMEs.
A special research and development (R&D) tax credit of up to 150% is, again, not available to these wrongly defined large firms.
