Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 168 and 169 together.

The Department publish an Annual Report on Tax Expenditures alongside the Budgetary papers each year. The publication of such a report is a statutory requirement under the EU Budgetary Framework Directive (2011/85/EU), which was transposed into Irish legislation under S.I. 508 of 2013.

Under this Directive the Department is required to publish detailed information on the impact of tax expenditures on revenues, this has been carried out each year since 2015 at Budget time. The most recent report from September 2022 can be found on the Departments website and contains details of the Department's list of tax expenditures and their costings. The next report will be published in October this year alongside the budgetary papers. The statistical information is provided to the Department by Revenue, who provide details on the revenue foregone for each Tax Expenditure for both the most recent year available and the previous year, along with the numbers claiming the relief. The Department uses the OECD definition of tax expenditure for the purpose of legislative reporting obligations.

Revenue has recently changed how they publish statistical information on tax expenditures. Since August 2023 Revenue have a statistical publication called Cost of Tax Expenditures on their website, this can be found atrevenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/tax-expenditures/costs-expenditures.aspx. The first section of this publication outlines available statistical information on the items defined by the Department of Finance as being a Tax Expenditure. The second section outlines the available statistical information on the remaining credits, reliefs and allowances not contained in the Department of Finance Annual Report on Tax Expenditures.