Broker to sue AIB over €6m tax bill

AN insurance broker who made a tax settlement of over €6 million with the Revenue Commissioners says he will sue AIB bank after “they hung me out to dry”.

Charlie McCarthy, of Fitzgerald Place, Fermoy, who paid taxes, interest and penalties of over €6 million to the Revenue, said he inherited the money from his late parents.

It was deposited in an overseas account.

“They (bank officials) blackguarded me over it,” he told the Sunday Business Post.

“I took advice from the bank and afterwards they hung me out to dry.”

Most of the tax settlement was made up of interest and penalties.

A spokesperson for AIB said the bank would not be making any comment on the report.

McCarthy, 45, is a majority shareholder and director of the McCarthy Insurance Group, based in Fermoy, Co Cork.

It employs over 120 people and has 12 offices in Munster and Dublin.

Paul Kavanagh, the group’s managing director, said the settlement was a personal issue for Mr McCarthy and it had nothing to do with the company’s business, policies or policyholders.

Mr McCarthy was one of two people who paid over e6 million to the Revenue. Another paid over e7 million.

The Revenue reported last week that 15,000 individuals had come forward to make a voluntary pre-deadline statement about a possible tax liability.

At that stage the Revenue had received €500 million from 11,000 of these individuals. Each paid an average of €45,000. More than half came from accounts in the north.

Last February, the Revenue told the country’s ten main banks to write to 100,000 customers who had overseas accounts advising them they may have tax issues.

Revenue chairman Frank Daly has vowed to continue the hunt for more unpaid taxes owed to the State lying in offshore accounts, but accepted that the 15,000 who had come forward probably represented a fair proportion.

Those who did not come forward to make a voluntary disclosure of offshore related evasion cannot rest easy. Revenue will pursue them with determination, he said.