Frank Daly Speaks To PAC On Tax Receipts

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

13 November 2006

Speaking at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee last week, Ireland's Revenue Commission Chairman, Frank Daly revealed that to the end of October, special investigations had brought in around EUR2.261 billion in revenue.

Speaking with regard to overall revenue collected, Mr Daly announced that:

"The impressive receipts shown are underpinned by an equally impressive growth in the volume of our business. For example, the annual increase in 2005 for PAYE employments was 6%, for self-assessment income tax cases it was over 10%, personal callers to Revenue offices increased by 13%, telephone callers increased by 22% and correspondence by 11%."

"All this growth meant that in 2005 Revenue had well over 2 million PAYE employments on its records, there were over half a million self-assessment income tax cases and over a quarter million VAT registrations. We received over 5 million telephone calls, over 3 million items of correspondence and over three quarter million personal callers to our offices."

"The Net receipts for 2005 were EUR39.490 billion which represents an increase of over EUR3.7 billion, or 10.4% on the corresponding figure for 2004 and some EUR1.8 billion above the Budget estimate. The increase over the Budget estimate was mainly due to much better than forecasted yields from Stamp Duties, VAT and Capital Gains Tax."

He went on to add:

"A total of 14,214 audits and investigations were completed in 2005. The total yield from these interventions (and Assurance Checks) was EUR575.4m. In addition to this yield, Revenue officers collected EUR7.79m in arrears of tax in the course of audit interventions."

"Details of 629 of the cases settled in 2005 were published under the provisions of Section 1086 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997. The total amount of the tax interest and penalties in published cases was EUR116.94m."

"In addition to the prosecutions for serious tax evasion reported upon there were also a considerable number (over 450) of Revenue prosecutions in the Customs and Excise area. As well as this over 1,000 convictions were obtained for summary offences relation to the non-filing of tax returns. In 2005, Revenue began publishing details of significant tax and duty cases on the Revenue website."

Recommended