The Revenue Commissioners are to seek new powers to compel auctioneers and estate agents to hand over details of Irish people who have bought properties abroad.
Revenue Chairperson Josephine Feehily says that the Revenue is currently investigating 2,000 foreign property purchases.
In addition, Revenue said it would be using a new high-powered computer based system to examine the lifestyles of 700,000 taxpayers this year to see if they match their tax profiles.
Ms Feehily said she would not be surprised if, in some cases, the estates of deceased taxpayers were to take legal action in relation to the penalties which Revenue may have imposed in certain tax settlements.
Ms Feehily also said that the Revenue Commissioners intend to target cash businesses for investigation in relation to tax evasion this year.
She said that the particular focus will be different in certain parts of the country.
Ms Feehily said that Revenue Commissioners in the South East had recently bought a batch of cash registers and had them dismantled to see how they might be manipulated for tax evasion purposes.
Revenue Officials have now started visiting certain business to examine how their cash registers are being operated.
She said that in other parts of the country the focus of the cash payments investigation will be on the motor industry and that elsewhere it will be on pubs.
Ms Feehily also said that the Revenue Commissioners intend to intensively use a new sophisticated computer based system to identify and pursue high-risk taxpayers.
The new system, called REAP, already includes information on property transactions as well as details of substantial purchases including cars and other items.
It will also include financial data accessed with the EU savings directive from next month.
The new REAP system will rank taxpayers in relation to their individual risk of tax default.
The Revenue Commissioners will then investigate the most risky taxpayers.
Last year 250,000 tax cases were checked for compliance and the revenue collected €734m from these cases.
This represented an increases of 33% in compliance checks compared with 2006.
In addition there were 14 successful convictions for serious tax evasion as well as another 10 prosecutions so far this year.
The Revenue Commissioners said today that it has 103 prosecutions cases currently in the pipeline.
