Revenue receives €109.6m from tax defaulters

The Revenue received €109.6 million from tax defaulters in the first three months of the year, including a record settlement of €22.17 million from property developers Bovale Developments.

The Government publication Iris Oifigiúil yesterday published the names of 150 tax defaulters who made settlements totalling €55 million.

The list included 59 bogus non-resident account holders, who made total settlements of €12.73 million.

Some 30 settlements worth a total of €11.39 million relate to Revenue investigations into offshore funds, while six settlements with a combined value of €930,000 arose from the Revenue's investigation into single premium insurance policies.

More cases are expected to arise from the investigation into insurance policies that were used to avoid declaring large lump sums for tax purposes.

To date, the Revenue has recovered €396 million in both tax owed and interest and penalties from this investigation, which it launched at the end of 2004. It is believed that the investigation will eventually net the Exchequer more than €1 billion.

The yield from the Revenue's investigation into bogus non-resident account holders stands at €841 million, while €823 million has been recovered as a result of its investigation into offshore funds.

Of the 150 published settlements, 54 were for amounts exceeding €100,000, with a further eight exceeding €500,000.

Another eight settlements were for more than €1 million and four of these were for more than €2 million.

In addition to these defaulters, the directors of Killarney business Hegarty Vehicle Works - Donal, John and Denis Hegarty (deceased) - each made a settlement of €756,729 in relation to underdeclaration of income tax and VAT, bogus non-resident accounts and single premium insurance products.

The Revenue list also indicated that Feargus O'Raghallaigh, a senior economic adviser to Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte had received court fines for two cases of failing to submit his tax offences. Mr O'Raghallaigh, The Willows, Glasnevin, Dublin 11 was fined nearly €5,000.

The party leadership were taken by surprise by Mr O'Raghallaigh's impending appearance on the list yesterday. He only made Mr Rabbitte's office aware of it yesterday afternoon.