Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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28. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of calls received by the Revenue Commissioners by month from 2017 to date in 2022, in tabular form; the number of calls per category; the average waiting time to be connected to a Revenue official; the number of calls left unanswered or disconnected; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55728/22]

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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29. To ask the Minister for Finance if his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Revenue Commissioners is currently writing to carers, widow’s pensioners, people on invalidity pensions and other DSP recipients, with no other income sources requesting them to complete income tax return before 31 October 2022 and 16 November 2022 for previous years 2019, 2020 and 2021 due to PAYE underpayments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55729/22]

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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30. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of recipients of the temporary wage subsidy scheme who will be expected to pay back tax in 2022 and in 2023, by county in tabular form; the number who had underpayments for 2020 and also received TWSS; the amount of persons with TWSS underpayments; the average TWSS underpayment per person; the total amount of outstanding TWSS under payments; his plans, if any, to scrap the TWSS tax bill for affected workers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55730/22]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 28 to 30, inclusive, together.

Revenue has recently written to over 300,000 individuals who, based on the information available to Revenue, may have overpaid or underpaid tax in some or all of the years 2019 to 2021 inclusive. These letters provide a preliminary tax position, advising the recipients to submit a tax return to claim any additional tax credits or reliefs that they may be due and/or to declare any additional income they may have received. Up to now over 1 million PAYE employees have submitted tax returns in respect of 2019, 930,000 PAYE employees have submitted returns in respect of 2020, and 880,000 PAYE employees have submitted their returns in respect of 2021.

In addition, approximately 90,000 letters were issued in the two-weeks ending on 21 October 2022, and form part of Revenue’s ongoing programme of communications to ensure that taxpayers are aware of their tax position and to ensure that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax and claiming the tax credits and reliefs to which they are entitled. Based on the Preliminary End of Year Statements, the approximate number of taxpayer units (where a jointly assessed couple is one unit), who may have either underpayments or overpayments and who have not yet submitted a tax return for the relevant year is provided in a table below.

Revenue has advised that a small number of individuals with only DSP income were inadvertently included in the recent communications campaign. In those cases, and where the person’s only source of income is from DSP, they do not need to submit an Income Tax return or take any further action on foot of the letter they have received. Notwithstanding, the specific DSP payments referred to by the Deputy are taxable payments and where the person has additional sources of income, they may have a tax liability.

In relation to the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) Revenue have advised that 222,049 taxpayer units who received TWSS payments in 2020 have finalised their tax position by filing their income tax return for 2020. Of those, 124,272 had tax underpayments where, 16,284 have paid the tax due with the remaining 107,988 currently paying the tax underpaid through a reduction in their tax credits from 2022 to 2025 inclusive. Details by county are provided in a table below. The balance of 97,777 PAYE returns resulted in an overpayment.

Where an income tax return is not completed, Revenue may not be aware of any additional credits or reliefs due to the taxpayer. Therefore, it is not possible to provide the final details on the amount of overpaid or underpaid tax as individual taxpayer circumstances differ. A Preliminary End of Year Statement is made available to PAYE taxpayers through the myAccount service after the end of each tax year. This statement sets out each taxpayer’s provisional tax position for that tax year, based on the information available on Revenue records.

Revenue have advised that in addition to the aforementioned taxpayers who have finalised their tax position for 2020, there are 220,184 PAYE taxpayer units who received TWSS, where the Preliminary End of Year statement indicates that they may have underpaid tax, but have yet to file their Income Tax return for 2020. Based on their Preliminary Statements, the tax underpaid in respect of this group is €190.5m with an average preliminary underpayment of €865 which equates to a reduction in tax credits of €216 per year over four years or €4.15 per week.

As the Deputy will appreciate, payments made to employees under the TWSS were regarded as income supports and share the characteristics of income. Other income earners in receipt of comparable “normal wages” are taxable on those wages. In the interest of equity, therefore, payments under the TWSS were subject to income tax and the Universal Social Charge for the employee. While income tax and USC on most income is deducted in real-time as and when the person is paid, the TWSS payments were not taxed in real-time and were instead liable to income tax and USC at the end of 2020. I have no plans to amend the tax treatment of TWSS liabilities.

As the Deputy may also be aware, employers have the option to pay the TWSS liability on behalf of their employees. Some employers have paid this directly to Revenue while others have paid the amount to their employees.

Demand for Revenue’s online engagement channels has steadily increased in the past few years and the current model which combines the facility to self-serve through MyAccount, online contact through MyEnquiries and the Jobs and Pensions phone service reflects both, demand levels from PAYE taxpayers and the need to provide an efficient and cost-effective service. Revenue continuously reviews its service channels on an agile basis to meet demand.

Revenue’s Jobs and Pensions telephone service is currently available from 9:30am to 1:30pm Monday to Friday. Outside of these hours a recorded message advises callers of the location on the Revenue website of where information of particular relevance to PAYE taxpayers is held including informational videos on a range of topics such as how to complete an Income Tax Return. The recorded message also provides information on Revenue’s online ‘myAccount’ facility that enables PAYE taxpayers to view and amend their records as well as information of the online ‘MyEnquiries’ portal through which they can securely submit and track the progress of written enquiries.

Statistics in relation to the Jobs and Pensions Helpline for the period January 2020 to 2022, year to date are provided in a table below. Unfortunately, comparative data is not available prior to 2020 as Revenue realigned its operational structure in 2019 with corresponding changes made to telephony architecture.