Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The figures are significant and it is important we all take every opportunity to highlight this and to remind people of their rights. As I outlined, for the remaining PAYE taxpayer units with a preliminary end-of-year statement for 2022 who are yet to file an income tax return, some 25%, or 563,300 people, have potentially overpaid tax of up to €400 million, although there are others who have underpaid tax, to an overall value of about €118 million. If we look back at the equivalent figures for 2021, for which we would expect most people at this stage to have claimed additional reliefs or submitted health expenses and so on, the estimate is that about 325,100 people, or about 20% of the remaining taxpayer cases, have potentially overpaid tax of up to €182 million. In total, therefore, between 2021 and 2022, Revenue believes taxpayers have overpaid more than €580 million, although, again, there are underpaid sums for the two years, at significantly less, totalling about €230 million.

The message to people is to check how they are fixed. It is simple to go online and make a claim.

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