There has been a rise in the incidence of solicitors defaulting on the payment of stamp duty relating to house purchases, according to figures from the Revenue Commission.
The figures, obtained by Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes in a parliamentary question to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, showed there were 155 cases involving solicitors failing to pay stamp duty on property transactions in the first five months of the year.
The Revenue said the cases were from a total of 45,117 transactions involving stamp duty, the vast majority of which relate to property. The Revenue said that there had been around 200 such cases per annum in the three years up to 2008.
Mr Hayes said: “It has recently come to my attention that there are a growing number of cases where solicitors are simply defaulting on their responsibilities to their clients.
The Dublin South West TD said: “If their solicitor does not pay the stamp duty, in full, on the transaction of the property, the property in effect is not registered or stamped.”
Already this year, in the first five months, they have 155 cases, and if this trend continues for the rest of the year, we are likely to see an increase in this practice by about a third in 2009, he said.
In a written response to Mr Hayes’s question, Mr Lenihan said he had been informed by the Revenue that, where a solicitor defaults in paying stamp duty to
Revenue and is “struck off” subsequently as a practicing solicitor, the Law Society will appoint a new solicitor to complete the cases of the defaulting solicitor.
In such cases, the new solicitor will pay the stamp duty to Revenue and be compensated accordingly by the Law Society.
The Revenue has discretion to mitigate interest and penalties falling on home purchasers on a case by case basis under Section 14(3) of the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999.