Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

Terry Clune

Taxback.com

Terry Clune started Taxback.com as a student sideline 13 years ago and has transformed it into a global business with over 650 employees, offices in 21 countries and a projected turnover of €90m for 2009.

Named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Ireland last year, Clune demonstrated his entrepreneurial skills from an early age, organising discos and events when still at school in Co Wicklow.

Taxback.com began in 1996 when he was working in Germany for the summer while studying business at Trinity College Dublin. “I saw a market to tap into support and help fellow students who were working abroad to recover income tax,” he explains.

Back in Ireland, he kept the business running on the side, finished college and applied to become an accountant. “I did that for a week and then I left,” he says. “I decided to do my own thing rather than work for a company and thankfully that’s proved a good move.”

Getting started

He hired his first employees with the help of grants from Enterprise Ireland and moved into an office on Aston Quay. “Our business is mainly built on making partnerships with other companies,” he says. “Our first partner was USIT, the student travel company at the time, and we set up next door to them. So we got a lot of passing trade for our tax service as a result.”

The company has continued its policy of partnering and as a result does little advertising. “We make below-the-radar deals with companies that then promote our service and receive a referral commission,” says Clune.

The company’s largest worldwide partnership to date is with credit-card company Visa, which makes its clients aware of Taxback.com’s VAT recovery service. 

“We also partner with a lot of the big travel companies around the world which are sending people abroad to work, and many of the biggest recruitment agencies that then promote our services to their CV candidates.”

The Taxback.com group now consists of eight companies, which provide a range of services including income-tax refunds for individuals and businesses operating overseas, international corporate payments, VAT recovery, property-tax returns and business and travel visas.

Tough times

The focus on diversification was also driven by a big shock to the business around eight years ago. “At that time we were heavily dependent on the income-tax market. There was a change in the US tax policy which wiped out about 80pc of our business over a period of about a month or two,” he says.

“Many other companies are experiencing difficult times right now but we went through our very difficult time then. We immediately and never stopped diversifying and coming up with new ventures and services that we can provide, and vertically integrating our business.”

One example is the company’s entry into the visa-processing business, where Clune says it is the biggest in Europe and probably the second biggest in the world.

Clune says the company will never be reliant on any one market or sector again. “We’re an Irish company and about 130 of our staff are in Ireland and most of our key management are here, but only 5pc of our clients are in Ireland. Over the past year [2009], we’ve grown over 40pc in turnover.”