REVENUE SHERIFF CENSURED AFTER AVOIDING STAMP DUTY

The current Revenue sheriff for Co Mayo avoided paying more than €100,000 worth of stamp duty on ten properties by changing the dates on the deeds of sale, according to a report in The Sunday Business Post.

Charles A Kelly, a solicitor in Swinford and a former Fine Gael vice-president, was censured by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and ordered to pay €15,000 for avoiding €113,905 in stamp duty involving ten transactions in 2005 and 2006.

The tribunal said the penalty imposed was relatively light because of Kelly’s “20-year unblemished record” and because the offences seemed to be “the exception rather than the rule”.

The Law Society appealed the leniency of the fine and asked the president of the high court to bar Kelly from practising on his own.

“According to a report in this month’s Law Society Gazette, the president of the high court more than trebled the penalty to €50,000 and banned Kelly from practising as a sole practitioner,” the newspaper reports. “The judge ordered that Kelly should practise only as an assistant solicitor under the direct control and supervision of an approved solicitor of at least ten years’ standing.”

However, Kelly remains the county’s Revenue sheriff.