THE DATES TO file tax returns will remain the same next year but a change could be introduced from 2015.

There had been uncertainty surrounding the pay-and-file deadline after the Minister for Finance had announced that the Government intended to bring the date forward.

The Department has said this afternoon however that their intention remains the same but that this change will not happen until 2015 at the earliest.

The  pay-and-file arrangements apply to returns such as self-assessed income tax, capital gains tax and capital acquisitions tax.

The decision not to change the date was taken after a consultation process which ended on 8 November.

But some stakeholders have expressed disappointment that the plans have been delayed and not scrapped completely.

Ian Talbot, chief executive of business group Chambers Ireland, for example has this afternoon called the proposals “utterly unfeasible”:

Delaying the implementation of a new deadline by a year does nothing to solve the very real problem that businesses will have trying to compute and pay taxes several months in advance. This proposal is utterly unfeasible and must be permanently shelved.

Budget

The proposal to bring the date forward is directly related to the change in the date of the Budget which was moved from December to October to allow for the submission of returns and spending plans to the EU.

This requirement was part of the Ireland’s adoption of a common budgetary timeline along with other euro area countries.

The consultation process outlines some of the reasons why the Government wants to change the date.

For example, the current pay-and-file deadline of 30 October for self-employed persons resulted in almost double the rate of income tax being paid in November 2012 that was paid in the other months of that year.

Now that the Budget is being held in mid-October the Government wants more certainty as to the annual tax take on Budget day.

Three options are being considered; moving the deadline to June, moving it to September and a third choice involving moving the date to September but also allow taxpayers in receipt of State payments to mandate the payment to Revenue.

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