Accountants in Strabane
Accounting, tax, payroll and advisory for Strabane businesses — run from our office in Ballymena, not a call centre across the water. Fixed fees, plain English, and someone who picks up the phone.
The business base in Strabane
Strabane sits directly on the border, with Lifford in County Donegal on the other side of the river. Cross-border trade is not a specialism here, it is the ordinary condition of doing business, alongside manufacturing, retail and agriculture.
Two jurisdictions, two currencies, and staff and customers who cross daily. That raises questions — where employees pay tax, which VAT rules apply, whether you have created a presence in the Republic — that a GB accountant will almost never have met.
Getting to us, and us getting to you
About an hour and a half from Ballymena, across to the west.
Genuinely remote work, and none the worse for it. The reason Strabane businesses use us is the border detail, not the drive.
What we do for Strabane businesses
On the border, the ordinary questions have different answers, and getting them wrong is expensive in two tax systems at once.
- Cross-border VAT — goods and services in both directions, treated correctly under the Windsor Framework.
- Employees who live across the line — where they pay tax and where you operate payroll, established properly rather than assumed.
- Currency — euro and sterling trading, and how the movement lands in your accounts.
- Permanent establishment — whether what you do in the Republic has created a filing obligation there.
- Compliance — accounts, Corporation Tax, VAT and payroll, on time.
Questions we get asked
Some of our staff live in Donegal. Where do they pay tax?
It depends on where the work is actually done, not where they sleep, and cross-border workers have specific arrangements between the two systems. It is worth establishing properly for each person rather than applying one rule to everybody, because getting it wrong creates arrears in one jurisdiction and overpayment in the other.
Have we created a business presence in the Republic?
Possibly, and it is worth knowing rather than finding out. Selling into the Republic usually does not create one. Having people, premises or someone concluding contracts there often does, and that brings filing obligations that are much cheaper to meet than to correct.
Is a GB accountant enough for a border business?
Honestly, no. It is not about competence — GB firms do not meet these questions in a normal week. The mistakes we see are treating NI as GB for goods VAT and missing that goods and services follow different rules.
Looking for an accountant in Strabane?
Tell us what you need and we'll come back to you, usually the same working day. No call centre, no script.
Prefer to talk first? Call the Ballymena office on 028 2522 0100, or:
We work right across the region
Northern Ireland is our largest base. Most work runs by phone, video and WhatsApp, so distance from Ballymena matters a lot less than it used to.