Revenue published their usual New Year report of initial tax results from the year gone by. The headline results for 2011 show that tax compliance levels are being sustained. The results also show an increase in the number of Revenue audits and assurance checks; the two factors are hardly unrelated.

There are no surprises when it comes to the total tax yields reported as these have been highlighted in the Department of Finance 2011 Exchequer returns, with the results confirming the increase in income tax yields and falling VAT receipts for 2011.

The positive trend in tax compliance levels continued in 2011 with a 2 percentage point increase in compliance levels for large cases – taxpayers with an annual tax liability greater than €500,000 and by one point for medium cases – taxpayers with an annual tax liability between €75,000 and €500,000. The compliance level for all other cases remained constant at 80%. Arguably this is the most significant compliance statistic – in 2008 the figure was 71%. Although since then a month's grace has been added which helps the comparison, compliance levels are more or less back to where they were before the crash.

The number of collection enforcement procedures carried out was only slightly up on the previous year. The number of taxpayers subject to sheriff and attachment enforcement was 1,747 more than in 2010, however, the instances of solicitor enforcement was down by 1,000.

The total number of assurance checks carried out by Revenue was also up on 2010. Revenue completed 91,700 more assurance checks during 2011 yielding a total of €67.9 million from 546,499 checks. The total number of audits is broadly in line with 2010; however on breakdown by type of audit, Revenue carried out more comprehensive audits in 2011 than the previous year. Audits on single tax/duty and multi tax/duty were marginally fewer than in 2010.

The number of special investigation cases was broadly on par with the number of cases in 2010, however, the total yield from these investigations for 2011 was nearly half that taken for 2010. This is somewhat expected given that many of these investigations have been on-going for a number of years now with most settlements likely to have been made at the earlier stages.