REVENUE CORRESPONDENCE:THE REVENUE Commissioners are in correspondence with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his tax adviser, Des Peelo, in relation to the information emerging from the Mahon tribunal's inquiry into Mr Ahern's personal finances.
Mr Ahern was not able to secure a tax clearance certificate in the wake of the 2007 general election because of this ongoing issue.
He has already accepted he must pay tax arising from three amounts of money he received in the past.
Two of these are, seemingly, political donations of £5,000 each which he used for personal expenditure and did not declare. The third amount has not been disclosed.
Mr Ahern has told the tribunal that lodgements totalling more than £21,000 to his building society account in the period 1994 to 1997 arose from his salary, but the tribunal has said there is no evidence to back up this assertion and it has been told that branch records show that some of the lodgements made came from sterling cash.
Unless Mr Ahern can show that the sterling was purchased from his declared income, he may be in serious difficulty with the Revenue.
If the sterling came from elsewhere, then he failed to declare it at the time it was lodged (when he was minister for finance) and has more recently misled the Revenue about the lodgements.
Furthermore, if it is the case that the lodgements did not come from his salary, the question arises as to where his salary went.
Mr Ahern has very little by way of overheads relative to his income.