Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Public Accounts Committee

Comptroller and Auditor General 2016 Report
Chapter 20: Corporation Tax Receipts

9:00 am

Mr. Niall Cody:

The challenge we had was to say what element of the recovery was actually a restriction on the R&D element of the credit. If we go in to do an audit on a company that has an R&D credit we do not necessarily restrict ourselves to a problem with the R&D credit. One could find that there was a problem with expenses for employees. In the collection or audit yield, it was not necessarily clear that the full recovery in an R&D audit was a restriction on the R&D credit. The Comptroller in his study of it recommended that we would capture exactly what was the restriction of the credit. What we have done is we have mandated our officers, when they have the recovery, to raise the assessment and collect it using a specific section of the Act. That is then recorded in our IT systems and then we will be able to say exactly the restriction was that. The only thing that I cannot say 100% off the top of my head, because I did not come with that piece of paper in my head, is the idea of whether our IT system enhancement has taken place. Certainly, the policy decision has been taken.