Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 92:

In page 106, to delete lines 24 to 35 and substitute the following:" "(4) (a) Where a person is a marketer of a transaction that it would be reasonable to consider is a disclosable transaction and the promoter of that transaction has not provided the marketer with a transaction number for that transaction in accordance with section 817E, then within 30 working days from making the first marketing contact in relation to that transaction, the marketer shall provide the Revenue Commissioners with -
(i) the name and address of the promoter of the transaction,
(ii) details of the transaction, and
(iii) all materials, whether provided by the promoter or otherwise, used to make a marketing contact in relation to the transaction.
(b) Where a marketer provides information to Revenue in accordance with this subsection, then this shall be wholly without prejudice as to whether or not the transaction is a disclosable transaction.",".

This amendment relates to section 80, which amends the mandatory disclosure regime by introducing a new subsection (4) into section 817L of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997. Under the revised mandatory disclosure regime proposed in the Bill, the Revenue Commissioners will assign a transaction number to each scheme disclosed to them under the legislation and will notify this number to the promoter of the scheme. The promoter, in turn, is obliged to give the number to any taxpayer to whom the scheme has been sold and to any person who markets the scheme. The taxpayer is obliged to include the transaction number in his or her return of income, thus allowing the Revenue Commissioners to track the use of the scheme more easily.
The purpose of subsection (4) is to impose certain obligations on a marketer of a scheme that is subject to the mandatory disclosure regime, where that marketer has not been provided with a transaction number by the promoter, as required by the legislation. These obligations are being introduced so that any person marketing a scheme, which should have been but was not disclosed to Revenue, will be obliged to provide Revenue with as much information as he or she has in regard to that scheme.
As drafted, subsection (4) was open to the objection that a marketer could not always know whether a scheme he or she was selling was an avoidance scheme that was subject to the mandatory disclosure regime. This amendment recognises that there may be occasions when a person is marketing a scheme but does not actually know all of the details of that scheme - he or she is simply putting taxpayers in contact with a promoter and that promoter is the only person who really knows all of the details of the scheme.
This amendment makes it clear that a marketer cannot avoid an obligation under subsection (4) by arguing that he or she did not know all the details of the scheme and, therefore, could not know whether it was disclosable or not. The obligation on a marketer applies if it would be reasonable for him or her to consider that the transaction would be a disclosable transaction.
This amendment also makes it clear that the fact that a marketer has provided information to Revenue in regard to a scheme - now that the legislation explicitly acknowledges that the marketer may be providing that information without having perfect knowledge of the scheme - does not, in any way, prejudice whether or not that scheme actually is a tax avoidance transaction that is subject to the mandatory disclosure regime. If the marketer provides information about a scheme which is one that ought to have been disclosed by a promoter but was not, then Revenue will seek penalties for non-disclosure against the promoter of that scheme.