Self-employed use Internet to pay €200m tax in 24 hours

Self-employed people paid almost €200 million over the Internet in the past 24 hours, as the deadline for online filing came to a close.

Such was the level of use of the Revenue's online service, ROS, that the system slowed almost to a halt, sparking uproar from accountants all over the State.

Accountancy institutes and the Irish Taxation Institute contacted the Revenue and complained, leading to the release of a press statement in the afternoon from the Revenue announcing that, while yesterday's deadline was not being extended, it would "be taking a sensible and pragmatic approach" to late filings.

The Revenue will not be applying surcharges or interest where returns are received over the next few days and where people have made a genuine effort to meet the filing date.

The deadline for self-employed people for paper filings and payments to the Revenue for income tax for the year 2002 was October 31st, 2003. For electronic filings and payments, the deadline was midnight yesterday.

Payments can be made online by laser card, by way of online banking, or by debit instruction.

Most debit instructions authorised the making of payments on November 21st, meaning that hundreds of millions of euro were to be lifted by the Revenue from taxpayers' accounts at midnight.

Last night the total amount paid via the Internet under the tax head was moving towards €500 million.

In the last 24 hours, the Revenue received 10,000 online filings for the tax head, and almost €200 million in payments. The total for 2002 was 23,000 filings, accounting for 9 per cent of the total that year.

By late yesterday evening the number of filings under the tax head was 98,900 and workers at ROS were hoping it would make 100,000 by midnight.

Such a figure would account for 40 per cent of the total, far ahead of the target for this year which was 75,000.

A spokeswoman for ROS said that a lot of people who missed the deadline for paper filings decided to avail of the later online filing date, but did not know how to use the system.

Heavy use was made of the helpline, she said. "They were on a steep learning curve and we had to hold a lot of hands."

The Irish Taxation Institute welcomed the Revenue's press release and said it understood the decision to adopt a flexible approach rather than extend the deadline.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland said its offices in Dublin had been inundated with phone calls over the last two weeks from members who were unable to file returns on behalf of their clients.

It said it had first written to the Revenue Commissioners about the problems its members were experiencing on November 13th.