THE REVENUE WEBSITE experienced major problems today as thousands of users attempted to log on to check if they received a tax bill due to Covid-19 related payments they received this year. 

The Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) and the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) were not taxed at source and instead are liable to income tax and universal social charge (USC) at the end of the year.

Preliminary statements of tax liability were made available to PAYE workers through the MyAccount portal on the Revenue.ie website today.

Numerous users reported difficulties accessing the site, including that it was loading very slowly and that it crashed on several occasions.

“We are aware of intermittent issues with our online services. Some customers can access services without any problem,” Revenue said.

“However, for some customers performance is slow and for others the service is unavailable. Our technical teams are currently working to resolve the issues,” it added.

A spokesperson added that the website experienced “very high levels of traffic”.

Revenue’s website also experienced difficulties when preliminary statements were released last January.

People who received payments under either of the pandemic schemes will have to fill out an income tax return form, which will be “pre-populated” with the information from the preliminary statement.

After that, a final statement of liability will be available, setting out the employee’s true tax position for 2020.

Any liabilities can be settled immediately through the ‘Payments/Repayments’ facility in MyAccount.

Alternatively, Revenue can gradually deduct the money by adjusting a person’s tax credits over a period of four years starting from 2022.

Statistics released by Revenue this morning revealed that around 600,000 PAYE workers had underpaid tax and/or USC in 2020.

Approximately 400,000 of these people had received a Covid payment.