PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE:THE STATE'S financial watchdog has recommended new laws that will allow the Revenue Commissioners to identify all landlords in the State.
In a report published yesterday, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee has concluded that Revenue should be given full access to the database of landlords who have registered with the Private Rented Tenancies Board.
It says that the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 should be amended to allow full access to the database.
The committee also said it wanted the Department of Social and Family Affairs (DSFA) to begin collecting the PPS (Personal Public Service) numbers of all landlords as they are required to do by law.
The report was prompted by an audit carried out by the office of Comptroller and Auditor General into the rent supplement scheme and the rent accommodation scheme.
Both schemes involve State expenditure (€442 million in 2008) and they are administered by the department.
But the auditor general's inquiry found that only 41 per cent of records supplied by the department could be automatically matched with Revenue's records, though it rose to over 60 per cent when a manual exercise was carried out.
Nevertheless, committee chairman Bernard Allen, the Fine Gael TD for Cork North Central, yesterday said that the committee was concerned that tax was not paid on a significant portion of rent income paid. This was highly unsatisfactory, he said.
"The committee examined this issue to see how the situation could be improved so that information is shared with the Revenue thus ensuring that State monies were not ending up supporting the black economy." The report is critical of the slowness of the department in requesting the PPS number of landlords, even though it was required to do so under the Finance Act 2007.
"The delay of more than 15 months in updating the IT systems in the DSFA to store landlords' PPS numbers is unsatisfactory," concludes the report.
The department has said that it will have updated its systems to accommodate this by the end of next month.
However, the key issue, said Mr Allen yesterday, was for the Revenue to have access to the tenancies board data.
"That measure is crucial in ensuring that a proper return is made on this income." At the launch of the report yesterday, committee members Darragh O'Brien and Roisin Shortall also highlighted an anomaly in the system whereby tenants were often made responsible for ensuring that non-resident landlords paid tax on their rental income.
The PAC recommends that withholding tax should be applied on direct payments made in rent supplement by the department to non-resident landlords.