Ireland's Banks To Shop Non-Resident Account Holders

by Robert Banks, Tax-News.com, London

06 December 2001

The Irish press has reported that the Revenue Commissioners department has embarked on stage 2 of its operations to bring customers suspected of holding bogus non-resident bank accounts who have not yet made disclosures to book.

Stage 1 involved a voluntary disclosure scheme by which the non-resident account holders could declare their tax affairs on favourable terms of interest plus penalties at a fixed 100 per cent before the deadline of 15 November, 2001.

At the time Revenue Chairman, Dermot Quigley, declared: 'We are very pleased with the success of Stage 1 of the project which has yielded a very significant amount of money for the Exchequer and is an important advance from the point of view of tax compliance. It allows us to focus our attention on stage 2 on a reduced target group of non-compliant taxpayers.'

Mr Quigley announced this week that the crackdown on bogus non-resident account holders had yielded over £179 million, which is £3 million higher than his provisional estimate of £176 million due in before the 15 November deadline of the voluntary disclosure scheme.

Now, two of Ireland's biggest banks, AIB and the Bank of Ireland, will provide the Revenue with the details of account holding clients who are believed to still be withholding information on their tax affairs. According to a report from the Irish Times, the Revenue was given the authority from the High Court on Monday to request customer information from the banks and the Revenue said it intended to make further applications as it continues to pursue the offending individuals.

The number of bogus non-resident accounts is believed to be around 2,000 more than the Revenue's initial estimate of 6,500 which indicates that many bogus account holders who came forward under the voluntary disclosure scheme actually held two bogus accounts and declared the tax on only the one account.

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