Mr. Brian Keegan:

One of the few things we can say is that there are not a huge number of people appealing, on any grounds, in any given year. This is one of the issues and one of the things we are hoping this new legislation will address. The overriding concern is that, in the taxes Acts, there are several grounds for raising an appeal against a determination by the Revenue Commissioners. Are we going to design a system which works at its best when it is dealing with the kind of appeals which the average taxpayer wants to bring? These are cases where too much income tax is being charged, there is a problem with the local property tax or the taxpayer has been disallowed a capital allowances claim for his or her business. Alternatively, are we going to design a system which deals with the very extreme forms of tax avoidance, in which, as I think it admitted in the earlier session, Revenue has already taken measures to ensure it is getting its cash in under the Finance Act 2014? My concern is that if we over-emphasise one aspect of general taxpayer activity over another, we are going to end up with the wrong answers.