Shopkeepers, businessmen, professionals and retired people from west Cork to Donegal are typical of the tax-evaders being offered an amnesty of sorts by the Revenue Commissioners.

They are the people who grasped the opportunity to hide money from the taxman many years ago by opening bogus non-resident bank accounts at their local branches.

They now have an incentive to regularise their tax affairs before November 15th. If they make a full disclosure of their crimes by the deadline, they will pay reduced interest and penalties on the tax they owe. No prosecutions will follow, and they will not have to read about themselves in the newspapers, along with other tax defaulters.

The financial institutions have paid £173 million in DIRT to the Revenue on the bogus non-resident accounts held between 1986 and 1999. DIRT is no longer the issue, because the banks have paid it. The Revenue is now turning its attention to the people who opened bogus accounts and wondering where they got the money from. To avail of reduced penalties and interest charges, account-holders must disclose the number of non-resident bank accounts they held and whether the money in them should have been declared for income tax, PRSI, VAT, Capital Acquisitions Tax, Capital Gains or other taxes.

Mr Dermot Quigley, chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, estimates that between 25,000 and 50,000 individuals still owe tax on monies put in these accounts, but he has refused to estimate how much money will come into the Exchequer as a result of the new arrangements.

Many of these individuals will have opened more than one non-resident account. It is possible millions of pounds could yet be collected.

The Comptroller and Auditor General has reported there were 302,000 non-resident accounts, containing £1.5 billion, in Irish financial institutions between 1986 and 1999. Counties with the greatest number of such accounts at that time were Donegal, Louth, Monaghan, Kerry, Galway, Mayo and Cork.

The tax dodge investigated by the Public Accounts Committee is being dubbed the "poor man's ansbacher scheme".

There were no bank accounts in exotic locations. It was a very simple proposition enthusiastically encouraged by your friendly bank official.

One bank employee recalls that a local businessman would typically make a daily or weekly lodgment to his bank account. Another would then be presented to go into his "Form F" account, the code word for a bogus non-resident bank account. In most branches, there were hundreds of such accounts.

The Form F was the piece of paper completed by the account-holder and was effectively a declaration to say he or she was not a resident in the Republic.

In most cases, these accounts were opened on the advice of ambitious bank officials who wanted to be seen to be bringing in deposits for their branches.

The accounts had two big advantages: "hot" money could be invested in them without it coming to the attention of the Revenue, and tax did not have to be paid on interest earned on the deposits.

Discussions with customers on the subject were often discreet, and it was not unusual for a bank official to drop the relevant forms out to someone's home for a signature.

Mr Donal Buckley, an inspector of taxes, told the DIRT inquiry about one Bank of Ireland official who helped one taxpayer in Co Tipperary to open 166 of these accounts in the 1980s. The official called to the customer's home with 200 non-resident forms to be signed, with around 40 to be filled in by his wife.

"The taxpayer spent an evening signing all these forms, blank forms, and the official arranged for the opening of the accounts right throughout the country," he said. The customer eventually made a settlement of £125,000 to the Revenue.

Many individuals will have used the tax amnesties to settle up with the Revenue, but there are still a considerable number who continue to brazen it out.

The banks and building societies have already written to notify customers whose accounts were among the sample audited by the Revenue during its examination of the financial institutions.

The Revenue has not entered into a formal correspondence with individuals on this issue. It does have a lot of information, however, and is threatening to use its powers to get a list of all bogus non-resident accounts from the banks and building societies to weed out any "hard core" who fail to embrace the new arrangements.

The banks have taken their medicine for their part in facilitating this type of tax evasion. The Revenue is determined the account-holders will also have to face the music.

If you have escaped the Revenue radar so far this is probably the best chance you will get to finally come forward.