Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This issue has probably been synopsised on the basis of how badly I put the question. This question was brought to me by Paddy Malone of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce. He is an accountant and he told me that every year there is an initial 31 October deadline for submitting returns. He talked about self-employed small sole traders, namely taxi drivers and people who would be involved in trades, etc. He said a significant number of them have been impacted massively by the pandemic. Some of them have heard about the Revenue online system extension. There is generally an extension for people who submit their returns online and pay on that date and it usually happens in or around November. It was set for 12 November this year and that got extended to 10 December.

It was explained to me that the difficulty in this regard is that the guy who owes €100,000 and has no difficulty paying it, because he has the money, will leave it until the end. That is fair enough because he has the money and he can pay it. A significant number of people are under severe pressure, however, and many accountants are rushing to get returns in for them because if they get their returns in on 31 October, then they do not necessarily have to pay on that date. The problem is that some of them believe they have an extension but do not actually have one. That are worried that if they put in their returns on 10 December but cannot pay, they will miss out on their audit exemption, which might mean they have to pay more money from an accounting point of view. Also, they do not have the money up front so this needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

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