58 Charge to tax of profits or gains from unknown or unlawful source.

[FA83 s19(1) and (2); DITPA96 s11]

(1) Profits or gains shall be chargeable to tax notwithstanding that at the time an assessment to tax in respect of those profits or gains was made—

(a) the source from which those profits or gains arose was not known to the inspector,

(b) the profits or gains were not known to the inspector to have arisen wholly or partly from a lawful source or activity, or

(c) the profits or gains arose and were known to the inspector to have arisen from an unlawful source or activity,

and any question whether those profits or gains arose wholly or partly from an unknown or unlawful source or activity shall be disregarded in determining the chargeability to tax of those profits or gains.

(2) Notwithstanding anything in the Tax Acts, any profits or gains charged to tax by virtue of subsection (1) or charged to tax by virtue of or following any investigation by any body (in this subsection referred to as “the body”) established by or under statute or by the Government, the purpose or one of the principal purposes of which is—

(a) the identification of the assets of persons which derive or are suspected to derive, directly or indirectly, from criminal activity,

(b) the taking of appropriate action under the law to deprive or to deny those persons of the assets or the benefit of such assets, in whole or in part, as may be appropriate, and

(c) the pursuit of any investigation or the doing of any other preparatory work in relation to any proceedings arising from the purposes mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b),

shall be charged under Case IV of Schedule D and shall be described in the assessment to tax concerned as “miscellaneous income”, and in respect of such profits and gains so assessed—

(i) the assessment—

(I) may be made solely in the name of the body, and

(II) shall not be discharged by the Appeal Commissioners or by a court by reason only of the fact that the income should apart from this section have been described in some other manner or by reason only of the fact that the profits or gains arose wholly or partly from an unknown or unlawful source or activity,

and

(ii) (I) the tax charged in the assessment may be demanded solely in the name of the body, and

(II) on payment to it of the tax so demanded, the body shall issue a receipt in its name and shall forthwith—

(A) lodge the tax paid to the General Account of the Revenue Commissioners in the Central Bank of Ireland, and

(B) transmit to the Collector-General particulars of the tax assessed and payment received in respect of that tax.