Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The section states the Revenue Commissioners may form an opinion on a particular transaction which constitutes false self-employment as a taxation transaction for the purposes of sections 811, 811A, 811B, 811C and 811D of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997. The difficulty is that all those applications relate to transactions which only commenced on or prior to 23 October 2014. While the anti-avoidance rule contained in section 811C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 relates to the transaction which commence after 23 October 2014, there is no longer a requirement for the Revenue Commissioners to form an opinion that the transaction is a tax avoidance one. The provision has been replaced with a self-assessment basis.

The fact that factors other than taxation arising in determining the contract offered to a worker may make it unlikely that the provision could have application as it would be necessary to establish that the primary purpose of the contract was to avoid tax which would now include from my Department, PRSI. Section 811B is a specific anti-avoidance provision in regard to certain schemes involving employment benefit trusts and does not apply to the tax avoidance transactions as set out in the Bill within sections 811 or 811C. Accordingly, inclusion of section 811B of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 in regard to false employment is not appropriate in this section or in the Bill.

Section 6 also provides that contributions to the Social Insurance Fund are to be included in the definition of tax in section 811C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, while the Social Welfare Acts are to be amended and included with the definition of the Acts in section 811C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 with the effect of when this Act is passed.However, Bills dealing with tax matters are money Bills and there are specific rules in that regard, which is probably why such matters are assigned only to the Department of Finance and the rest of us are not allowed near them. The inclusion of PRSI in this section imposes a charge and this can only be done by the Executive. I, therefore, have no choice but to tell the Senator that section 6 is, accordingly, not appropriate.