The 31st edition of the Farmers Handbook and Tax Guide, in partnership with the Agricultural Consultants’ Association (ACA), was launched earlier this month.
Agricultural accountant Martin O’ Sullivan has been authoring the book every year for the past 31 years. As the agriculture sector has undergone changes, so too has the handbook.
Speaking to Agriland, O’ Sullivan explained how he initially arrived at the idea for a book of this kind.
“We’re talking back 31 years ago when there was no internet, and all information came by way of hard copy, in whatever shape or form, and it was very difficult to source information on all of the issues that farmers would need,” he said.
“I was home cleaning my chutes one day and I got his brainwave and I said, what about a sort of farmers handbook that would embrace tax and all kinds of stuff,” O’Sullivan added.
At the time, the Agricultural Training Council (ACOT) – one of the forerunners to Teagasc – operated a farm training manual. However, this manual didn’t go beyond the technical aspects of running a farm.
“At the time [ACOT] had a farm managed by a manual but it was just all technical tables and stuff to do with farming. It had nothing about tax or social welfare benefits or anything like that – not that there were very many social welfare benefits for farmers in those days.
“It was good, and we used it a lot, but it was a farm planning booklet really,” he said.
“So I decided on that basis that I’d have a go, and 12 months later, or a little longer, the first edition of the Farmers Handbook emerged. It was a lightbulb moment as they say,” O’Sullivan added.
He explained that the first four or five editions were not in partnership with any entity or farm organisation. Then the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) came on board to partner on the handbook for about 10 years. Since then, for the last 15 to 16 years, the ACA has partnered with O’ Sullivan to develop the handbook.
The biggest change in the last 31 years which he has had to cater for in putting the handbook together is the increased number of farm schemes.
“At the beginning of the 31 years we were at the outset of a lot of current day schemes, like the Single Farm Payment, now called BISS (Basic Income Support for Sustainability). The farm retirement scheme and REPS (Rural Environment Protection Scheme) were about to kick off when we started,” he said.
“That was the very beginning of the whole raft of schemes that we have nowadays. So in that 31 years the biggest change would be the advent of all the various schemes. There wasn’t as much prior to that,” O’ Sullivan added.
“Other than that, has anything changed dramatically? Not an awful lot, just in real terms margins have gotten tighter. There haven’t been any profound changes other than the advent of supports and subsidies,” he said.
According to O’Sullivan, the book’s readership has been “pretty constant” over the years.
“In the first 10 years we kind of developed a readership that relied on it every year as the annual go-to manual, and it been reasonably constant ever since. It’s not declining, in fact in the last year or two it’s risen again for no apparent reason, because we didn’t do a huge amount of promotion,” he said.
One potential reason for this, O’Sullivan said, is that younger farmers, or potential farm successors, are becoming more business orientated.
“The traditional farmer is disappearing and a more business-like individual is emerging, because it is a business and it is about making a profit or getting out,” he said.
“They will look at the bottom line and say: ‘What’s in this?’; whereas their parents wouldn’t have done that, they were going to [farm] regardless.”
O’Sullivan started his career as a farm advisor, but fairly early on in his career moved into farm accounts when farm tax returns were just being introduced, seeing an opportunity in farm accounting, as many other farm advisors also did.
Farm accounting has been the core of his accountancy practice – based in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary – ever since, although he has always had farm advisors on the books of his practice as well.
According to O’Sullivan, the Farmers Handbook was “part and parcel” of his accountancy work, and the content of the handbook reflected the work of the practice year-to-year, as the queries of farmer clients gave an indication of which issues farmers had a demand for information on.
“What went on under the roof here dictated really what was in the handbook.”
The handbook covers a range of topics, and based on the queries of his farmer clients, O’Sullivan said that the topic that readers of the handbook are most interested in is the succession and capital tax section.
Queries related to health benefits, social welfare benefits and the Fair Deal Scheme are also issues that see a lot of queries.
Farm schemes, and legal issues such as right of way or how to make a will, are also frequent queries covered by their own sections in the handbook.
“People read it, they get enough information to give them an idea of how the thing works, and then the can go off to seek a bit of advice with an understanding…of how it works. That’s very common.”
Some may say that the internet would mean that a handbook of this type isn’t needed anymore.
However, O’Sullivan said: “If you go Googling anything you’ll find it there, but you have so much information in your face it’s difficult to know what you should be reading. The difference with a handbook like this is that the handbook focusses in on exactly what is relevant, and what people say to us, and that dictates how it’s laid out and presented.
“People often say: ‘Is there any need for it now with the internet?’, and that’s my answer, it’s far more concise and compact, because when you go into the internet you can find all kinds of stuff on the topics you’re seeking information on, and you don’t know where it begins and ends,” he added.