Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 15 November 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 9: Office of the Revenue Commissioners
Chapter 17: Revenue's Progress in Tackling Tobacco Smuggling
Chapter 18: Management of High Wealth Individuals' Tax Liabilities
Chapter 19: Corporation Tax Losses

9:00 am

Mr. Niall Cody:

The list of the reliefs is here. There are 14 - trading losses greater than €100,000 - that is where someone has carried forward trading losses and can set that against total income. Nearly half the number involved had trading losses in excess of €100,000 carried forward. Their income in the year would be in excess of €100,000 or €120,000 or whatever but they would have the €100,000 set against it. As for the rest of the reliefs, individuals had capital allowances, trading losses less than €100,000, and participation in the employment incentive investment, EII, scheme, where a person invests in some small company and can get the relief on that. There is a lot less, though, than we would have seen ten years ago because a lot of the reliefs have been abolished. There were a lot of property based reliefs which are now abolished. Then the issue of the high income earners restriction comes into play. That brings back in, for last year, I think, €32 million in liability in that some of the reliefs-----