Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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245. To ask the Minister for Finance if his attention has been drawn to the lotteries developed in Slovakia and now Portugal which encourage consumers to submit receipts for purchases to the lotto so the Government can create paper trails to ascertain which retailers and merchants are not complying with VAT laws, using false receipt numbers and so on; if he encountered problems with VAT returns here and if he envisages a merit in such an initiative; and if an initiative such as this was pursued, and a car is awarded each month to the winner, the cost of running the lotto and the potential reward to the Exchequer from increased VAT compliance. [31265/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Revenue Commissioners have advised me that they are aware of such initiatives in some Member States.   I understand, however, that the Member States in question require businesses to provide the Revenue authorities with electronic access to details of all their customer transaction data.  The customer receipts submitted for the lottery can be cross-checked against the transaction data provided by businesses.  Ireland does not have such a system in place to support this kind of checking and the introduction of such a system would impose significant costs on business. 

Over the last number of Finance Acts I have introduced various measures to support supply chain analysis and retail sales control such as the Return of Mineral Oil supplies, returns of Merchant Acquirer data on credit card transactions. In addition the design of the Diesel Rebate System, the Home Renovation Incentive and the electronic Relevant Contracts Tax are all designed to facilitate compliance and support legitimate trade.  A key element of all these initiatives is that they optimise the digital environment and allow Revenue to develop its compliance framework based on risk analysis, analytics and data mining.

There is no doubt that use of electronic invoicing, real time reporting of transaction data and remote access by tax administrations of business records is increasingly on the agenda internationally. Revenue will continue to monitor international developments and examine new ways of tackling non-compliance and shadow economy activity using a risk-based approach while ensuring that compliant business is not unduly burdened with unnecessary costs and administrative overheads. I will continue to respond positively through the Finance Bill to well-designed proposals from Revenue that tackle tax evasion and support legitimate trade.