Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The argument put forward by Revenue is that the date is intended as a clearly-signalled withdrawal of this opportunity from May next and will provide a powerful incentive to tax defaulters with offshore assets to come clean it in the intervening period. Revenue believes, from experience, that a more entrenched cohort of defaulters will fail to come forward but that by getting a significant number of offshore defaulters out of the way in this period, it will then be able to focus its resources on the task of vigorously pursuing the cohort to which I refer. The Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners has expressed a serious concern that shortening the timeframe to a date earlier than May could prove counterproductive. Tax defaulters need time to assemble the necessary information to make proper disclosures and if they do not have the time to do so, they will have no incentive to do anything other than to wait for, and hope that, Revenue will fail to find them for some reason. This, in turn, would mean a far less productive use of Revenue resources because it would be obliged to pursue every offshore case individually.

I advise the House of the considered view of the Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners. The date was not picked arbitrarily. It is the Revenue Commissioners' advice that 1 May is the most appropriate date.

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