In March 2008, the Government announced that the administrative burden on businesses should be cut by 25% by 2012. As part of the reduction programme for Taxation/Statistics, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) carried out a review of statistical potential of data collected by Revenue. The CSO has completed this review and have published a report on the review.

One of the drivers was the need to maximise the use of administrative data for statistical purposes in order to reduce the overall administrative burden on businesses.

The report contains twenty three recommendations relating to the statistical potential of the data holdings of Revenue.

Before anyone gets too carried away, only two of the “key findings” are in any way aimed towards reducing the administrative burden in the private sector. One suggests that the CSO's business surveys on some 28,000 businesses could be reduced (though not apparently eliminated) by applying some of the data captured by Revenue for the accounts menus. The other posits the use by the CSO of Revenue new business registration data, though it would seem that Revenue would need to gather more data on registration to satisfy the CSO's requirements.

However, we understand from TALC Simplification that this project should not involve additional data being collected by Revenue for CSO purposes only. In addition, the degree of transfer of data between the CSO and Revenue is governed by legislation. Ithard therefore to see how this report makes any meaningful contribution to the ambitious Government target.

The CSO report is available at http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/corporate%20publications/CSO_Revenue%20SPAR.pdf.