Stop urging jail for tax cheats, says group boss
Ms Kelly said common media gripes of tax cheats walking free while the poor go to jail for social welfare fraud misses the point.
The common view is that cheats are "just white-collar criminals, stealing from society and robbing their neighbours".
Calls by the media and members of the public for the incarceration of tax cheats have been building to a crescendo over the years.
Sending tax cheats to jail has not been a high priority in Britain or in Ireland.
And there has been ambivalence in society at large on the tax question.
In Ireland until recently, the only thing worse than paying tax for most people was reading about those who avoid paying their fair share, she said.
"Public anger at tax evasion goes much further than seeking mere equity. It frequently demands the offender be locked up and it excoriates the Revenue for failing to meet some notional quota of convictions for tax offences.
"I believe this is an attitude that ignores both history and reality," she said.
Revenue's appetite to go after tax-evaders changed in the mid-1990s and it has been playing catch-up ever since, she said.
That followed years of indifference proceeded by a policy of selective prosecution: going after only a small number of carefully chosen cases.
Between 1996 and 2001, Revenue prosecuted 18 cases for serious tax evasion: a figure that works out on average as one prosecution a year per million of population. That's a similar ratio to Britain where the Inland Revenue prosecutes about 60 cases every year the equivalent of one prosecution a year per million of population.
Only a tiny fraction of tax cheats are prosecuted either here or Britain.
"The reality is that it makes good sense for the Revenue to go for financial settlements in the vast majority of cases."
Ms Kelly also said she sympathised with the dilemma tax settlements posed for Revenue.
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