Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 28 November 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 9 - Office of the Revenue Commissioners
Chapter 17 - Tax compliance interventions
Chapter 18 - Tax relief on film production

9:00 am

Mr. Niall Cody:

Revenue and the Department have extensive exchange of information between us. Within the self-assessed income tax form 12, we pre-populate it. When we see the figures in the new year, the form 12 is pre-populated with some of the data for some of the schemes. With others, the information is dependent on how the feed comes across so in some of the fields for some of the smaller schemes, we give a pop-up information box to say how much people are in receipt of. I do not want to name a scheme because if I do it off the top of my head I will probably name the wrong one. This year's form 12 for next year will have pre-population of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection information. We pre-populate the form 12 for most of the schemes now. Where we cannot put in the figure but we know people are in receipt of funds, we give them a reminder. When we redesigned our PAYE services and the jobs and pension process, we pulled in as much of the information as possible, including the information on where we have it and where we have matched it. The good thing about the information we get from the Department is it is matched because the PPS number drives the whole process. Most of what the Chairman would like us to do, we are doing already.