Ms Josephine Feehily:

We were saying that our view of the law - or we would never raise an assessment - was tax was due. If the Deputy looks at case A he will see how that played out; it was quite similar but better written up. We raise an assessment based on our view of the law. If it is a fine technical point that has not been tested before in the courts, we could be wrong. In technical appeals in recent years I think we are right considerably more often than we are wrong. In relation to appeal commissioner statistics that I have reviewed, we win about one third of the appeals. That is what one would expect.

Our officers would not be doing their job if they were not interpreting the law and saying "actually this is a valid interpretation" and sort of testing it. The taxpayers will say they do not agree with that - with their lawyers that I discussed with the Chairman - so we would never look for money that we do not believe is due under a valid interpretation of the law. Then one gets an interaction and the other side comes back and says "this is another way of looking at the section" and we say "maybe they are right". In many cases those things are dropped and they are settled.