Written answers

Tuesday, 23 November 2004

10:00 pm

Photo of Liam TwomeyLiam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Question 77: To ask the Minister for Finance if the Revenue Commissioners have conducted investigations into the degree of complicity of financial institutions in some of the cases of tax evasion currently being unearthed; and if any cases are pending in respect of such practices. [29922/04]

Photo of Brian CowenBrian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that their recent investigations have had, as their initial and principal focus, the recovery of unpaid taxes for the Exchequer. The steps taken by their officers, including applications to the High Court for orders to access information in financial institutions in relation to taxpayers who have made false returns and as a result failed to pay their proper taxes, have resulted in the recovery of more than €1.6 billion in undisclosed taxes together with interest and penalties. Some €223 million of this sum, including tax, interest and penalties, was actually recovered from financial institutions who had failed in their obligations to remit the proper amount of deposit interest retention tax. It has been suggested that in some instances the defaulting taxpayers have been assisted in their actions by the financial institutions or by their officials.

Revenue has, within the range of offences provided for in the tax code, sought to identify cases where evidence amounting to the commission of an offence on the part of a financial institution or its officials could be assembled. I understand from it that the only relevant offence within the tax code, that of "aiding and abetting", is extremely difficult to prove and seems to require that the bank official needs to be directly advising the taxpayer in relation to the completion of the false return. Revenue has not come across any case to date where the involvement of the official can be proved to amount to knowingly "aiding and abetting" the taxpayer to make a false return.

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