Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 166: To ask the Minister for Finance, further to Question No. 87 of 13 October 2005, his views on the response from the Revenue Commissioners regarding the need to enable policy makers and commentators to formulate a view regarding the income impact of tax changes having regard to the fact that the historical gap in the published data and the current budget is too large; his further views on the possibility of using provisional data based on the number of employer returns detailing income and tax paid by PAYE workers made by the February deadline in each of the years 2003 to 2005 in the format of table IDS1 — distribution of the number of incomes, gross income charged and tax by range of gross income in the statistical report of the Revenue Commissioners (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30912/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The position in relation to the publication by the Revenue Commissioners of statistics and tables derived from income tax returns processed to date was explained in my reply to Question No. 87 of 13 October 2005.

I am satisfied that the Revenue Commissioners are committed to improving the timeliness of tax-based information and continue to pursue technical and other approaches to facilitate this. Ultimately, however, the timeliness of data is determined by the dates for filing of tax returns and the processes that must be gone through to reach an acceptable standard. In this regard the apparent advantage of producing more recent tax and incomes data could be offset by a deterioration in completeness and would not necessarily improve upon the current arrangement.