Banks to get bill for unpaid DIRT soon

The Revenue Commissioners' investigation into the financial institutions' non-compliance with DIRT is on target, and they will soon be calculating the banks' liabilities, the Dail Committee of Public Accounts inquiry was told yesterday.

Mr Dermot Quigley, chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, told the hearing that the investigation was "working very well" and that most of the audit work should be completed by the end of this month.

The Commissioners will then start assessing the tax, interest and penalties owed by the financial institutions.

Mr Quigley said the banks would be liable for any unpaid DIRT but the Revenue Commissioners would later be investigating the position of accountholders, when the initial investigation ended.

He pointed out that officials had already been contacted by some account-holders who wished to disclose such irregularities.

Thirty-seven Revenue officers were working full-time on the DIRT investigation, while 30 inspectors from outside Dublin were assisting in the audits. While they were auditing a random sample of non-resident accounts, high-value accounts made up a large percentage of the samples.

In cases where DIRT had not been paid, any liability would bear interest from the original due dates of payment. Penalties were also payable in respect of DIRT non-compliance.

Mr Quigley said the financial institutions were co-operating with the audits and he expected that they would like to settle any liabilities as quickly as possible.

The committee chairman, Mr Jim Mitchell, criticised the Department of Finance for failing to present its report on its work in response to the committee's recommendations.

Mr Tom Considine, secretary-general of the public service management division, told the inquiry that the report would not be finished until the end of July and would then have to be approved by the Minister for Finance, before being presented to the committee.

"I'm not happy with this response," Mr Mitchell said. "There are always reasons and excuses for not meeting deadlines."

He instructed the Department of Finance to ensure that its report was with the committee by the beginning of September.

Mr Mitchell also questioned the accountability of the Appeals Commissioners in the Revenue Commissioners. He said it appeared that they were not accountable to anyone, adding that this type of arrangement would inevitably lead to problems.

The committee expressed its concern at the effect of this extra workload on the day-to-day work of the Revenue Commissioners. Mr Quigley said that tasks such as the Ansbacher investigation did take officers away from audit work, but the 352 extra staff sanctioned by the Minister for Finance should compensate for this.

He added that over 400 random audits would be carried out this year, in addition to the day-to-day audits.

Mr Peter McLoone, the general secretary of the IMPACT trade union which represents staff in the public services and local government, said that 95 to 96 per cent of audits concentrated on companies with a turnover of under £5 million.

He suggested that the Revenue Commissioners could be missing major problems in bigger companies because of this.

The trade union representatives called for more training for Revenue staff members, to bring them up to date with new challenges, particularly in the area of information technology.

The next meeting of the committee is on Tuesday, July 11th.