The Revenue Commissioners are to employ a new team of specially recruited accountants and solicitors to help investigate the taxation affairs of financial institutions and large corporations. The chairman of the Commissioners said the new powers in this year's Finance Act open up a whole new area for auditing financial institutions. Dermot Quigley said that, until this year, Revenue inspectors could not enter bank premises to examine their records except in very limited circumstances.
Now they have the power to carry out full on-site audits of financial institutions' tax liabilities and their Dirt tax returns. He said that they fully intend using these powers. The new team of investigators will also be engaged in sampling non-resident accounts to determine if they are genuinely non-resident. The Revenue Commissioners chairman said that the 37 additional staff, who are to be employed in the audit and investigation area, were also needed to deal with the Revenue's workload, which has increased dramatically in recent years.
The Revenue Commissioners also announced today that they would be providing advance notice to any taxpayer whose bank account is likely to be investigated. This advance notice, which is not required by law, will give the taxpayer an opportunity to make representations before such an investigation takes place. A third initiative was also announced by the Revenue Commissioners involving their review procedures for people who wish to complain about how Revenue audits were handled. Until now, these reviews were conducted by a senior revenue officer, but in future taxpayers will be able to opt to include an external reviewer from outside the Revenue Commissioners.
