Tax amnesty yields £176 million, says Revenue

The latest tax amnesty for bogus non-resident account holders has yielded £176 million (€223.4 million), the Revenue Commissioners revealed today.

The money paid is understood to have come from 3,500 account holders in respect of an estimated 6,500 accounts.

An internal Revenue Commission document, released under the Freedom of Information Act, had previously estimated £700 million was due to the Revenue.

However, a spokesman for the Revenue told ireland.comtoday this figure had been "inaccurate and exaggerated".

The deadline for the voluntary disclosure scheme closed on November 15th following a massive advertising campaign and repeated warnings from the Revenue there would be no escape after the deadline.

Revenue Chairman Mr Dermot Quigley said: "We are very pleased with the success of the project which has yielded a very significant amount of money for the Exchequer and is an important advance from the point of view of tax compliance".

"The take-up of the voluntary disclosure scheme, which had yielded only £10 million by mid-October, picked up considerably in the final weeks, as we expected," Mr Quigley said.

Labour leader Mr Ruari Quinn called on the Revenue to show no mercy to the estimated 3,000 bogus account holders who failed to take advantage of the scheme.

Mr Quinn said: "The fact is that 3,000 people who defrauded the Exchequer of tens of millions of pounds have been allowed to escape without having to face the prospect of criminal prosecution."

"The continued softly softly approach to tax fraud is in stark contrast to the treatment of social welfare fraud where many more are prosecuted and end up in prison although the amounts of money involved are usually considerable smaller", he said. Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Mr Jim Mitchell said: "It is clear that the yield is only the tip of the iceberg."

"The phenomenon of bogus non-resident accounts arose, at least in part, from the non-prosecution culture of the Revenue. This non-prosecution culture must now be totally purged and be seen to be purged," Mr Mitchell said.

The Revenue said it would now focus on those who held bogus non-resident accounts and did not use the voluntary disclosure arrangements.

When added to the £173 million collected under the programme of look-back audits of financial institutions, the £176 million announced today brings to £349 million the amount collected by Revenue to date in the DIRT investigations.

The Revenue claims to have information on the identities of a substantial number of account holders, which was obtained in the course of the look-back audits of financial institutions.