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THE CHAIRWOMAN of the Revenue Commissioners is to face questioning from TDs and Senators tomorrow on the circumstances surrounding how 115,000 pensioners were told they may have to face additional tax bills this year.
Josephine Feehily will attend a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform on the fallout from last week’s disclosure that the Revenue had told 115,000 they would face an extra tax bill this year – incorrectly in some cases.
Officials from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will also attend the meeting to discuss the handling of the issue.
Labour TD Alex White, who chairs the committee, said he was “pleased” that Feehily and the officials had agreed to attend, and to discuss “the communication of the tax situation for some older people”.
“No-one will argue with the necessity of tax compliance on the part of all citizens,” White said. “However, many pensioners are unsure of where they stand on their tax liability, and need reassurance.
“At our meeting tomorrow, we will be seeking clarity on the matter, and looking at how this situation was handled.”
TDs will also question Revenue on its broader communications strategy and how it might be reviewed. The meeting will begin at 2pm tomorrow, and a live stream will be available here.
It has separately emerged that up to 15,000 pensioners will pay extra tax this year, even though they are not liable for it – but that this cash will be refunded to them “as quickly as possible”.
Michael Noonan has rebuffed criticism that he made no mention of the data exchange between the Revenue and the Department of Social Protection, saying it was public knowledge that the data was to be shared with the goal of saving €45 million.
When will they share information between the Dept of Justice and Social Protection? Huge amounts of people in jail and still being paid dole while their partners/wife’s claim allowances for the other half being inside. A huge need to target single parents both male and female. A young woman from my home town recently got a three bedroom house for her and her 8 yr old daughter then shortly afterwards spent upwards of 25,000 on a new car. How can this be justified? Target these slingers before the elderly please
I fail to understand why the Revenue Commissioners had to wait until they received information from Social Protection. Did it not occur to them that every taxpayer over the age of 66 is potenially in receipt of a non contributory pension? Why did they not simply send a tax return to every personal or company pension recipient on their 66th birthday.
The vast majority of people in this country go out of their way to be tax compliant. Did no one in this Department have the wit to help them?
My mother who is 95 got one of these letters last week. She has a a small HSE pension on top of her OAP one. I assumed therefore that she was liable for additional tax, else why would she have received the letter? I sat down to try to figure out what additional deduction would henceforth be made.
I consider myself reasonably literate and numerate but try as I might I could not make any sense of the figures quoted. There were details of gross tax credits, net tax credits, tax rate bands and allocation of tax credits and rate bands. There was one glaring omission: the bottom line setting out what difference (if any) all those figures were going to make to her weekly pension payment.
I therefore decided to phone the Revenue this morning. I rang the 1890 number at 8:45 only to get a message saying their opening hours were from 10am to 4pm. This surprised me. Surely, given the controversy the whole thing has caused they could have extended the opening hours for a few weeks at least?
I called again at 10am and was waiting for approx.15 minutes. The delay was expected but their IVR (automated phone system) was most annoying. Messages about their online service and the fact they never send emails looking for confidential information were repeated ad nauseam. I have some professional experience of call centre IVRs and this was one of the worst I’ve come across. I’m sure that it further antagonised a lot of callers
I eventually spoke to a very helpful lady. Her calmness and professionalism impressed me given the pressure she and her colleagues must be under at the moment. Having quickly checked my mother’s details she was able to say that there would be no change as far as her pensions were concerned. Which, of course, was very good news.
Why didn’t they spell out this in the letter and thus avoid getting a phone call? As Pat Kenny said on TV last night the figures only make sense to a person very familiar with how the tax system works. To everyone else they appear as gobbledegook. A bit more savvy regarding communications with the public is badly needed by Revenue.
Nicely put…
Don’t know why they don’t yet have one massive database that all state departments refer to, this would soon stop fraud. Yes all the data protection do gooders would complain about such a set up, but if you’ve nothing to hide, what’s the problem?
All this information sharing should have happened years ago. Yes going after the pensioner’s is politically damaging as they are more likely to vote, but taxing pensioners on income of more than €350 per week doesn’t seem that particularly inequitable to me. Especially when you consider the fact that they generally get medical cards, TV licenses and fuel allowance among other things.
I live in Denmark where we have an integrated government information system. Everything here is linked to what is called your cpr number. This is a 10 digit number composed of your date of birth followed by four more digits. It is used for everything here from tax records, medical records, motor taxation even public libraries and medical records. All the information is centralised in a database available to government agencies. What this means is that incidents of welfare fraud are quickly spotted as your cpr number will reveal all property you own as well as what car you drive, bank records etc. I know many people in Ireland might be horrified at such an idea but a major difference here is that people trust their civil servants and local council workers and have very high standards when it comes to integrity in public office and in public servants. The kind of mistakes that I read about in Ireland would simply not be accepted here and those responsible would lose their jobs.
Both civil servants and public servants need to be made much more accountable for their actions in Ireland.
Which ministers are attending? They bear the political responsibility for the department of finance and social protection (as well as collective responsibility for all government decisions).
inb4shitstorm
Just send letters to all Revenue officials notifying them that they have been sacked. No big deal. If Dail Eireann has a problem with that just sack the fuckwits in the Dail.
Has anybody got information that would point me to the letter in question or can anybody post the a copy of the letter on-line.
Its a little difficult to understand the situation properly without looking at the letter.
have your say