As part of the Budget 2020 measures announced by the Minister for Finance, Revenue launched a consultation for a new collection system for applying and collecting Dividend Withholding Tax (DWT) from dividends and distributions. Under the auspices of CCAB-I, the Institute responded to Revenue’s consultation.

Some of the observations of CCAB-I may be summarised as follows:

• MyEnquiries should not be used for communicating changes to Revenue as it does not work in real-time and would likely cause unnecessary delays for taxpayers and Revenue alike.
• The same system should be applied in principle to all shareholders so that companies, withholding agents, qualifying intermediaries, etc. do not have to operate a number of regimes.
• Consideration should be given to the additional administrative burden and cost that will arise to companies and intermediaries in complying with any new regime.
• We would recommend a phase-in process of one year. During this phase in period, we would request that fixed penalties and tax geared penalties should be suspended or at least reduced in recognition that errors are likely to arise as the new system is bedded down.
• This proposed new system should not result in additional burdens being placed on the taxpayers without an improvement in Revenue’s customer service.
• We do not want the development of the DWT real-time reporting project to come at a cost for improvements to MyEnquires and customer service standards.

Read the Institute’s full response on here.