Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Draft Heads of Finance (Tax Appeals Commission) Bill: Discussion
2:00 pm
Mr. Brian Keegan:
An equally potent argument can be made in favour of those taxpayers who, under the current system, look at a Revenue assessment and know it is excessive but, because the system is so convoluted, unclear and costly, are prepared to pay what is termed "go-away money" and satisfy the Revenue assessment.
We need to be just as concerned to ensure the system is fit for those people also. I would really like to see a system which can deal with the extremes rather than a system which is designed for the extremes. Revenue has sight of all of the cases in the entire country and I have no doubt it has come across things I cannot even imagine. However, if we start going down the road of designing an appeal system which highlights one or two egregious examples and, as a consequence, does not address the requirements of the more average and ordinary taxpayers, the kind of guys our members are dealing with it all the time, we are missing something.