Ms Josephine Feehily:

From my point of view, when we write to people or place advertisements announcing a new self-assessment tax and indicating that people must file a return before a certain date and they do that before we start to issue reminders or engage in enforcement, that is, by our definition, voluntary compliance. It is the same definition we use for VAT, self-assessed income tax filers and anybody else who is filing a self-assessed tax return. This term refers to returns received by the deadline without Revenue having to engage in any kind of compliance interventions. Until now, all we have done is issue returns, conduct a communications campaign and remind people of deadlines. We have not taken any compliance action. That is our definition and I am sorry if that is not how the Deputy sees it. I am afraid, however, that in Revenue authority terms, this is voluntary compliance.