Mr. Niall Cody:

The committee asked us for details last Friday, and we have tried to provide as much as we can. One of the issues around losses forward and the age analysis is that changes were made to the corporation tax return around 2012 to capture the losses carried forward. Before that the losses used were the only item itemised on the return form. That was changed, partially to identify the losses forward. The timing concerned the collapse of the economy, and there was a massive increase in losses, so we had to capture that risk to the corporation tax base. We have figures going back. When it comes to looking at individual companies we can actually trawl back through time. The challenge is to pull out that information in a statistical format. Since 2012 those figures have been captured in our systems.

Losses forward are made up of two component parts, which are the actual losses and unused capital allowances.