The focus of the statements before the Public Accounts Committee at the end of November was on tax receipts collected by Revenue for 2018, Revenue Vote, tax compliance interventions and tax relief on film production. Perhaps of most interest to members are the matters raised by Deputy Peter Burke, Chartered Accountant. Deputy Burke questioned the Revenue Chairman on the flat rate expense review and the published policy that such expenses would be amended or withdrawn from 1 January 2020. According to the Revenue Chairman (at that time) the review is still ongoing and until such time that the review has been completed there will be no changes implemented. Deputy Burke also raised the matters of the ROS technical issues on the income tax pay and file deadline, MyEnquiries, PAYE Modernisation and the OECD digital tax proposals.

Flat rate expenses

In response to Deputy Burke’s question on the flat rate expense review and the expected changes from 1 January, the Revenue Chairman said: “We are carrying out a comprehensive review of the range of flat rate expenses in order to ensure that they are in accordance with legislation and changes in employment practices. This time last year, we had planned to amend flat rate expenses as we carried out our reviews across particular categories. In the context of last year’s budget and Finance Bill discussions, though, we recognised that there were concerns. We are proposing a postponement of the implementation of the review for any sector until we have completed the review of all sectors.”

When asked about the change from 1 January 2020, the Revenue Chairman responded that: “We are in correspondence with the Minister, so I must wait to see what his reply will be (see here of this issue of tax.point). I will consider his reply and we will publish the correspondence. We will be clear about what we will be doing before tax credit certificates issue in early December.”

Revenue also commented that: “there are a small number of categories that we have not finalised our correspondence on yet. Last year, we stated that we would not implement for anyone until we were in a position to do so for everyone.”

MyEnquiries

Deputy Burke highlighted the frustration experienced by many Chartered Accountants when using the Revenue’s MyEnquiries service, noting that “MyEnquiries is a global issue”. The Revenue Chairman in response noted that “generally the system works”. At a meeting of the TALC MyEnquiries sub-group, Chartered Accountants Ireland submitted several examples of delays experienced by members using the service and discussed with Revenue options for improvements. The Revenue Chairman noted the work of the sub-group and the concerns raised, also remarking “the agent representatives’ bodies are not slow to point out matters to us and we work with them to fix that”.

ROS

The Revenue Chairman highlighted the technical issues experienced on Tuesday 12 November and Wednesday 13 November and the Revenue’s response, while also noting that “although we cannot ever say for definite that we will not have problems in future, we will not have these problems in future”.

PAYE Modernisation

An overview of the real-time payroll system, in operation over 11 months now, was provided by the Revenue Chairman. A report is due to be published next April detailing the learnings under the system.

OECD corporation tax proposals

Deputy Burke questioned the work ongoing in the area of taxing the digital economy and the OECD proposals. The Revenue Chairman noted that two proposals split into Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 are at varying degrees of developments.

Chartered Accountants Ireland, via the auspices of CCAB-I, responded to the OECD Pillar 1 consultation and the Pillar 2 consultation.

The full transcript of the Public Accounts Committee hearing on Thursday 28 November is available to read here.