Wedding adviser's firm made €100,000 settlement with Revenue

THE COMPANY of celebrity wedding adviser Peter Kelly has made a tax settlement of almost €100,000 with the Revenue Commissioners. Details of the case emerged in the latest list of tax defaulters, which was published yesterday.

The list, covering cases settled in the final three months of 2008, records settlements of €18.66 million with 89 individuals and companies. Mr Kelly’s company Weddings by Franc, which he owns with his wife Eadaoin, paid interest and penalties of €68,456 on a tax bill of €29,388, which emerged as part of the Revenue’s investigation into the use of single premium insurance products for tax purposes.

The company was also found to have underdeclared corporation tax, VAT, PAYE and PRSI.

Mr Kelly has appeared several times on RTÉ in recent years as a wedding planner, featuring on series of Weddings by Franc and Brides of Franc.

The construction industry figures prominently in the list, accounting for a significant number of the 16 company directors named as well as 14 contractors and businesses. The largest single settlement was for €3.168 million from building contractor Thomas Keane of Valentia Road in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry. He paid interest and penalties of €2.257 million on a €910,000 tax bill in relation to income tax, VAT, capital gains tax, capital acquisitions tax, offshore assets and single premium insurance matters.

Takeaway food supplier Achille Orlandi, with an address in Liberty Square, Thurles, Co Tipperary, paid €1.711 million over underdeclared income tax and VAT following a Revenue audit.

Revenue audits of nine fast food businesses yielded settlements of €3.48 million. Four of the businesses share an address on Trimgate Street in Navan, Co Meath and a director Lin Ying Choi.

Another high profile settlement featured Tom Canavan Motors, a Honda and Volvo dealer in Dublin’s East Wall Road, which paid a total of €295,729. Of the 89 published settlements 46 were for amounts of more than €100,000, with six of them exceeding €500,000. Eight settlements, involving sums of €1.35 million, related to the long-running pursuit of bogus non-resident accounts.

While the 89 named cases in the defaulters’ list paid €18.66 million, the total yield from Revenue audit and investigation programmes settled in the fourth quarter of last year was €145.2 million. Among the more unusual settlements was a €154,811 deal reached with the Revenue by Killarney jarvey Robert Tangney in a case stemming from the inquiry into single premium insurance products.