SEPA blamed for €644m fall in January tax take

The Department of Finance has blamed the introduction of a new European wide payments system for a year on year €644m decrease in tax income for the month of January.

The 17.1% drop, from €3.774bn to €3.130bn was because of the introduction of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) which slowed down Revenue’s receipt of certain taxes from three days to seven days.

The department insisted it was “a technical timing issue” and would not alter the tax forecast for 2014 as it is expected January tax revenues have grown about 5% year on year.