On the day that the bank loans transferred to NAMA and administrators were appointed to Quinn Insurance, the Revenue Commissioners issued the following press release:
Following a recent determination by the Appeal Commissioner, the Revenue Commissioners accept that cooking chocolate comes within the meaning of paragraph (xii) of the Second Schedule to the VAT Act, 1972 (as amended) and is therefore liable to VAT at zero per cent.
Welcome to the real world!
The Revenue has allowed around 900 companies to pay tax debts amounting to €84m in instalments because of financial difficulties, The Sunday Business Post reports.
Under the Case Decision Escalation Framework introduced last year, companies can plead inability to settle in full and opt instead for phased payments. So far, 900 companies have availed of this.
Revenue chairwoman Josephine Feehily said the taxman had no desire to come down hard on innocent victims of the recession but urged businesses to engage early and openly.
However, the Revenue has never disclosed the criteria for allowing phased payments and warns that “it will not become a banker of last resort”.
Sean Penn will film his next movie in Ireland solely because of the artists’ tax exemption.
This Must be the Place is about a wealthy retired rock star and Penn is believed to have chosen Ireland as the logical place to base his character because of the tax perk.
The script says the former rock star is an American who now lives in Ireland because of the tax exemption for artists, The Sunday Times reports, describing it as a case of “art imitating life”.
Government Ministers have been ordered to justify the retention of tax breaks relevant to their departments ahead of a cull on tax reliefs, according to the Sunday Business Post.
The National Pensions Framework was published by the Department of Social and Family Affairs last week. Key recommendations made include:
In a Revenue Audit special, The Sunday Business Post gives two pages of salient advice on how to avoid a tax audit and how to deal with one if the taxman does decide to call. It tries to answer such salient questions as “if you find something is wrong, should you own up before the Revenue Commissioners arrive and how do I minimise the disruption of an audit?”
And the “hits” keeping coming, as the old-time disc jockeys used to say. The Sunday Business Post predicts that figures for the first two months of the year – to be published this week – will show that the tax take is down 20 per cent on the same period in 2009. Vat receipts are significantly down and income tax is also below expectations.
A Government stamp duty trade-in initiative to kick-start the ailing housing market has turned out to be a monumental failure. Only one property developer has availed of the scheme announced by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in the emergency Budget last April. Anyone who accepted a property in exchange or as part-payment for a new home could avail of a deferred stamp duty payment under the scheme. The builder would not be liable for stamp duty until the swapped or traded-in house or apartment was sold on, or until December 31, 2010, which ever came first.
It’s not much fun being a tax man these days. Who to screw is a serious question. The fat-cat population is diminishing at rapid rate. The amount of tax collected from the country’s wealthiest individuals is now a third of what it was in 2007, when the Irish property market started to collapse.
Accountants, tax advisers and banks will be forced to whistle-blow on clients or potential clients involved in tax avoidance schemes under new plans being finalised by the Government. They will be automatically forced to inform the Revenue Commissioners of schemes that exploit tax loopholes and allow wealthy individuals to slash their tax bills.
If you want to keep more of your hard-earned dosh out of the taxman’s clutches then it’s time to go to the movies, advises Niall Brady in The Sunday Times.
The potential upside has increased since the government increased the threshold for investment in the film industry from €31,750 to €50,000, recognising its importance to job creation.
Some of RTE’s top stars are facing the prospect of paying more tax if the Revenue decides they should be classed as employees, The Sunday Independent reports.
It had been speculated that long-term contractors would be targeted in last week’s Finance Bill but this failed to materialise.
However, the Sindo is now taking another bite at the story via the high earners in RTE such as Ryan Tubridy, Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan who are paid through their companies rather than as employees.
“Any change in the criteria could have major implications for thousands of outsourced workers,” the newspaper notes.
The number of people claiming tax reliefs has more than trebled in the past five years, new figures from the Revenue Commissioners show.
More than 1.4m people claimed reliefs last year, according to The Sunday Business Post. The average rebate was around €380 with most claims arising from medical costs and work-related expenses.
The article notes that the 238,000 people who claimed for service charges last year will have that particular avenue closed to them after 2010, with reliefs on waste charges etc being phased out in last week’s Finance Bill.