Offshore tax deadline too tight for some

Thousands of people seeking to avail of the Revenue Commissioners' scheme for declaring tax liabilities on previously undisclosed offshore assets will not have enough time to calculate their liabilities before the deadline, tax practitioners are warning.

The Revenue has already extended the deadline for making settlements by two weeks, from May 28th until tomorrow, June 10th.

The move followed lobbying by tax practitioners, accountants and other parties who said they needed more time to finalise their clients' liabilities.

Yesterday the Institute of Taxation in Ireland said its members were having difficulty obtaining information relating to their clients' accounts from the financial institutions involved.

Mr Brian Keegan, director of research at the Institute of Taxation, said some members would only be able to provide the Revenue with an estimate of their clients' liabilities by tomorrow and then undertake to make a final settlement at a later date.

"In some cases, tax advisers are looking for statements going back 12-15 years," he said.

"It is taking an awful lot of time getting the information back from the financial institutions, and while the extension has been very helpful in some cases, in others our members are having to go back to the Revenue and ask for a further extension on a case-by-case basis."

Mr Keegan said if the extension had been for an extra fortnight, it would have "cut out a lot of correspondence" between tax practitioners and the Revenue.

Mr Frank Hussey, president of the Institute of Taxation of Ireland and senior partner at LHM accountants, said he would be "hard pushed" to submit final computations by June 10th.

In order to calculate clients' liabilities, tax practitioners and accountants need the offshore assets' statements showing the monies lodged and the amount of interest credited by the banks.

"One client has been told by his bank that it will take three weeks to get the information," Mr Hussey said.

These concerns were also reflected by Mr Brian Purcell, chairman of the CPA tax committee, who said his biggest fear was that the Revenue would have unrealistic expectations with regard to the extent of supporting documents accompanying settlements.

The deadline extension was made available to people who contacted the Revenue before March 29th to make known that they had a liability relating to a hidden account.