Increased Powers For Irish Revenue Commissioners Slipping Through Dail 'By Stealth'

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

28 February 2006

Irish opposition party Fine Gael has warned that legislation allowing Revenue Commissioners to delve into private bank accounts, in their quest for information to clamp down on tax evasion, is being rushed through parliament without appropriate scrutiny.,

Fine Gael Deputy Leader & Finance Spokesman Richard Bruton noted in a statement at the weekend that more than half of the 2006 Finance Bill's 122 sections, many of which herald important reforms in the Irish tax system, have not been subjected to any scrutiny by the Dail, the lower house of the Irish parliament.

Furthermore, Mr Bruton complained that two-thirds of the 79 amendments to the bill introduced by Brian Cowen, the Finance Minister, have also not undergone Dail scrutiny.

According to Mr Bruton, this means that over EUR1 billion worth of tax changes have slipped through parliament without debate.

Mr Bruton stated that the situation not only underlined the "pathetic nature of the Dail’s ability to scrutinise financial management", but also the government's deliberate attempt to ram through the legislation so as to avoid potential opposition.

“True to form, the Fianna Fail/PD Government ensured that most of the significant reforms introduced in this year’s Finance Bill were not debated at all," he remarked.

Chief among Fine Gael's concerns are proposals contained in the legislation to confer on the Revenue Commissioners new powers to require financial institutions to return details of their customers’ accounts.

The party has also highlighted several other proposals which have not been subject to debate including: the extension of time on property reliefs; new reliefs for private hospitals; changes in pension relief; the cap on reliefs by high earners; incentives to place SSIAs in pension funds; and the extension of Film Relief.

“There are major issues of equity and efficiency of use of taxpayers’ money involved in these provisions," noted Mr Bruton.

"The same shoddy approach to scrutiny of spending which has permitted the waste of billions of euro on white elephants and poorly-managed projects, is equally evident on the taxation front," he added.

Mr Bruton praised the finance minister for commissioning a cost benefit analysis of Ireland's many tax reliefs, which concluded that many tax schemes were benefiting wealthy taxpayers with little measurable benefit to the economy, but he warned that the lessons of allowing tax policy to be dictated by "political whim" are not being observed.

“The lesson we must learn is that spending taxpayers’ money on tax schemes as well as on spending projects must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny," he argued.

Recommended