Revenue pays out €6.6m under new energy costs scheme for businesses

More than 8,800 businesses have already registered for the Revenue Commissioners’ new support scheme for companies facing surges in electricity and gas costs, with almost 3,000 claims worth €6.6 million fully processed to date.

The Revenue said on Thursday that the vast majority of claims completed so far have been approved. Preliminary statistics show the wholesale and retail sector have made the most claims, followed by accommodation and food businesses, and then manufacturing.

The Temporary Business Energy Support Scheme (TBESS) opened to eligible businesses for registration in November with the first claims possible since early December. Qualifying tax-compliant businesses that have seen their energy unit prices increase by 50 per cent or more can make a claim for 40 per cent of the increases in energy bills covering the period from September 2022 to February 2023.

The Revenue gave the update as it published its headline figures for 2022 and highlighted that the “unprecedented” €82.2 billion in taxes and duties collected for the exchequer in 2022 – up €14.7 billion or 21.5 per cent on 2021 – had been underpinned by “continued high levels of voluntary timely compliance” on the part of taxpayers.

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‘Challenging circumstances’

This was notwithstanding the “challenging circumstances” in which many found themselves.

“We acknowledge the co-operation of businesses, individual taxpayers, and tax practitioners and thank them for their positive engagement throughout the past year,” said Revenue chairman Niall Cody.

“We do, of course, understand that businesses can have temporary cash-flow difficulties. In those circumstances, the important thing is to file the required tax returns and engage with us early. We have a proven record of engaging successfully with viable businesses who have temporary cash flow difficulties.”

Businesses must be tax compliant to avail of State support schemes including TBESS, he noted.

The Revenue’s approach to compliance continued to evolve last year with the launch of its compliance intervention framework, Mr Cody added.

Criminal convictions

The organisation completed more than 427,000 audit and compliance interventions in 2022, yielding €813 million. It also secured nine criminal convictions for serious tax evasion and fraud, published 53 tax settlements in the List of Tax Defaulters and settled 104 tax-avoidance cases, yielding €16.1 million.

“The identification, targeting and disruption of shadow economy and other illegal activity continues to be a key focus for Revenue. In 2022, we seized over 51 million cigarettes valued at €39.4 million and over 3,600 kilos of drugs with an estimated value of €46.4 million,” Mr Cody said.

Some 40.2 million customs declarations were processed in 2022, up 58 per cent on 2021 declarations. Customs duty of about €640 million was collected in the year, up €110 million or 21 per cent on 2021.

Some €280 million of this was in respect of imports from the UK, which Revenue commissioner and director general of customs Gerry Harrahill said indicated that business had “by and large” adapted to the customs formalities that govern the State’s trading relationship with the UK since Brexit.

The Revenue also collected more than €22.3 billion in taxes on behalf of other departments, agencies and EU member states in 2022.