Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 61:

In page 266, between lines 37 and 38, to insert the following:“(d) a certificate of tax compliance,”.

This amendment relates to an issue which arose in the context of a young man with a young family who set up a construction company and subcontracted work to a contractor. Over a period of seven or eight years he allowed the contractor to build up a level of credit on the understanding that the latter was tax compliant. Halfway through the period the young man invested a considerable amount of money in his business before discovering that the contractor had not been tax compliant for six or seven years but was still trading. The young man's business collapsed as a result of the level of exposure that had built up. It is important that we ensure that companies operating in these areas are tax compliant. This amendment provides that companies that are making annual returns must provide certificates of tax compliance as part of that process. It is also designed to ensure that a company may not continue to be registered if it is not fully tax compliant. There is an issue with regard to syncing annual returns with tax returns but it is intended that tax compliance certificates be available for the most recent year. This would be a positive development because it would give confidence to those along the supply chain that there will be no danger of those whom they are dealing with exposing them to future risk.