Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or e-mail to dcoyle@irish-times.ie. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice. Due to the volume of mail, there may be a delay in answering queries. All suitable queries will be answered through the columns of the newspaper. No personal correspondence will be entered into.
Bank merger
I lived in Ireland approximately 40 years ago. When I was coming back to the US, my father opened an account in the local bank for me. I believe it was either the Munster & Leinster Bank or the Provincial Bank in Kanturk. It would seem that AIB took over the Munster & Leinster, but who took over the Provincial?
Mr D.B., e-mail
I would guess yours must be one of the somnolent accounts, the Dail Committee of Public Accounts is so keen for the Revenue to get its hands on. It only goes to show that there are a lot of small accounts out there which have been dormant for a long time but have nothing suspicious about them.
As you say, the Munster & Leinster was subsumed into AIB in the 1960s when Allied Irish Banks, as it then was, was formed from the amalgamation of a number of smaller banks around the State.
Having got that far in your investigations, I am surprised no one saved you some bother by informing you that the Provincial Bank was part of that same amalgamation from which AIB emerged. As such, any account you may have had with the Provincial would now reside with the AIB.
Quite what has happened to your account and the funds in it over the intervening 40 years, I have no idea, but I would suggest you contact AIB headquarters at 01-660 0311 or by e-mail at: www.aib.ie/global/
E-Commerce
Could you tell me how much it would cost to set up a fully functional e-commerce site?
Mr D.M., e-mail
Being out of step with the seemingly unstoppable march of e-commerce is increasingly frowned upon, but I have to tell you I have not a clue what it would cost to set up a "fully functional" e-commerce site.
Having spoken to some people who do know something about these things, I am assured - logically - that it depends entirely on how you want the site set up, how complex the graphics etc will be and what precisely you want it to do.
The same people tell me there are a host of webmasters out there who specialise in precisely this sort of thing. The number is growing almost daily as more and more people see the prospects in helping others such as you to profit from the Internet revolution. As such, it would be impossible to give you a comprehensive and up-to-date list of companies which provide the service.
For what it's worth, I gather the costs can run from considerably below £1,000 (€1,270) for the most basic of sites to many thousands for the most complex. Everyone I speak to indicates that sites need to be eye-catching without being cluttered in order to grab customers' attention in an increasingly crowded Web. That seems to translate into higher costs, but then it would, wouldn't it? There are also the ongoing costs such as the rental of space on the Web, the registering of domain names and the upgrading of the site as needs change and the customer demands a fresh look - much in the same way that shops regularly invest in upgrading window dressing.
I would suggest you talk to ISME or the Small Firms' Association, both of which spend considerable time trying to persuade small firms to take advantage of the Internet. I would guess they have plenty of contact numbers. Alternatively, you might try the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment or, possibly more profitably, Enterprise Ireland or even FAS. If you prefer to steer clear of bureaucracy, you could just hunt down the names of webmasters on sites that impress you on the Web. Their details normally appear somewhere on the site and it has the advantage of allowing you to see what sort of thing you might expect to get by way of end product.
Stamp duty
My understanding is that stamp duty is payable on a document to be stamped, regardless of whether there is a consideration to be paid for the property. Is stamp duty payable when a house or a farm is inherited? Would there be different reliefs if the beneficiary is a spouse or son/daughter? What are the rates for the different value of assets?
S.H., e-mail
You are right in normal circumstances that a transfer of property above a certain value does attract stamp duty whether that property is paid for or gifted. However, the situation with inheritances is different. In the same way that assets are not subject to capital gains tax upon transfer at death, so too with stamp duty. It does not matter who the inheritor is, although for what it is worth, transfers between spouses at time of death tend not to attract any taxation.
On the subject of stamp duty, one of my new year's resolutions is to get the rates of duty sorted out in my head. At the end of last year, I incorrectly said that stamp duty of 7 per cent was payable on residential properties worth in excess of £350,000. As it happens, the 7 per cent rate kicks in at £250,000 and continues until £500,000 where the rate rises to 9 per cent. My thanks to alert reader Mr J. McV. for drawing my attention to the mistake.
Property valued from £170,000 to £250,000 is taxed at 5 per cent, with 4 per cent being the applicable rate from £100,000 to £170,000. Below that, the rate is 3 per cent above the £60,000 threshold.
Up to that threshold, no stamp duty is payable on residential properties since changes in the stamp duty regime were introduced in April 1998. Also exempt are newly built homes if they are smaller than 125 square metres as long as you live in the house for five years after you first buy it.
