Revenue takes €17m haul from contractors

Fianna Fáil’s spokesperson for finance Michael McGrath yesterday described as staggering the €17m in unpaid tax, penalties and interest the Revenue Commissioners has collected in two years from contractors who were found to have claimed excessive expenses.

The haul follows an audit programme, known as ‘the national contractors project’, which targeted people who provided professional, technical, scientific and IT services; mostly to large manufacturing businesses through a company structure.

In the past year alone, Revenue collected €7.6m after having collected €9.3m in the first year of the initiative. It started the countrywide probe after an earlier pilot project, in the south-west region, yielded €4.5m.