Revenue Commission Releases Annual Report

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

29 April 2008

Ireland's Revenue Commission last week announced the publication of its annual report for 2007.

According to the report, the most significant developments for Revenue in 2007 were:

• EUR66bn in taxes, duties, PRSI, levies, etc. were collected, and more than EUR18.5bn repaid, giving net receipts in 2007 of over EUR47.5bn - almost EUR2bn above the corresponding figure for 2006. For the first time in five years, the receipts were below the Budget estimate, by EUR1.7bn.
• Special investigations yielded a total of EUR132mn in 2007. Most of this figure related to the Single Premium Insurance Policy investigation (which yielded over EUR30mn) and the Offshore Assets programme (with a yield of EUR54mn). The cumulative total for legacy investigations is now almost EUR2.424bn.
• There were fourteen convictions for serious tax and duty evasion; 1,263 convictions for non-filing of tax returns and a further 500 summary convictions were obtained for various Customs, Excise and VRT offences.
• Total audit and assurance check activity yielded EUR734mn from over quarter of a million interventions: (251,934 which represented a 33% increase in the number of interventions over 2006).
• The ongoing construction sector project yielded a further EUR151.4mn in tax, interest and penalties in 2007.
• Total audit and assurance check activity yielded EUR734mn.
• The number of transactions conducted through the Revenue On-Line Service (ROS) showed strong growth in 2007. Payment transactions were up by 38% to over 560,000 and the value of ROS payments increased by 31% to EUR21.6bn.
• Use of the PAYE Self-Service facilities increased significantly in 2007, with over 156,000 customers registering to use PAYE On-Line, and almost 330,000 self-service transactions recorded.
• Arrears as a proportion of total gross receipts stood at 1.9% - one of the lowest rates of any tax administration worldwide.
• Overall debt was EUR1,286mn in 2007.

Commenting on the publication of the annual report, Josephine Feehily, Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, explained that:

"Revenue's strategy for the next three years is to be an organisation that provides excellent service, increasingly customised, and increasingly delivered electronically and which focuses our compliance activity on the riskiest cases, in the riskiest sectors"

"Our fundamental aim, in all that we do, is to make it easy for people who want to do business with us and to make it difficult for those who don't."

Recommended