Orthopaedic consultant named as tax defaulter

Orthopaedic consultant Brian Hurson was yesterday named as the tax defaulter who failed in court this week to stop the Revenue Commissioners publishing details of a €1.1 million settlement.

In his second such settlement in four years, Mr Hurson paid the Revenue €1.136 million in taxes, interest and penalties related to undeclared income unearthed by the authority's investigation of offshore assets held by Irish residents.

In late 2003, Mr Hurson, of Nutley Avenue, Dublin, made a settlement of €184,826 arising from a bogus non-resident account. The Revenue published these details in March 2004.

Mr Hurson went to the High Court earlier this week in a bid to prevent the Revenue Commissioners publishing his name on their quarterly list of tax defaulters.

However, the case never got off the ground as Mr Justice Frank Clarke ruled that the action itself could not be taken anonymously. Mr Hurson and a woman who was taking the case with him then withdrew their proceedings.

As a result, the Revenue Commissioners named him yesterday, 48 hours after publishing details of 148 other cases concluded in the three months to the end of September.

Mr Hurson is an orthopaedic specialist who practises in the high-profile Blackrock Clinic, St Vincent's hospital and Cappagh orthopaedic, all in Dublin.

The Irish Times made a number of attempts to contact him at his clinics yesterday, but these were not successful.

The Revenue's offshore assets investigation grew out of the earlier bogus non-resident accounts investigation, which to date has netted more than €850 million in taxes, penalties and interest for the exchequer. The Revenue believes the final haul from the offshore assets investigation could top €1 billion. The total is already level with that collected from bogus non-resident accounts.

Addressing the Dáil Public Accounts Committee hearing this week, Revenue chairman Frank Daly said he expected it to be the most lucrative of all the tax evasion investigations.

He also said a recent High Court ruling barring the Revenue from seeking information from an Isle of Man-based National Irish Bank subsidiary would have little impact on the commissioners' investigations.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many of the State's leading banks set up bogus non-resident accounts for clients to aid them in evading the retention tax charged on interest earned on cash held on deposit in the Republic.