Tax evaders given week to ‘come clean’

PEOPLE who stashed six-figure sums in banks and tried to evade tax have less than a week to come clean or face possible prosecution, the Revenue Commissioners have warned.

September 15 is the voluntary disclosure deadline for anyone who deposited more than €100,000 between 2005 and 2007 in a bank or building society but failed to declare some or all of it for tax purposes.

By next Monday, they must give the Revenue “a notice of intention” to make a disclosure. They will then have until January 15 next year to work out the amount of tax due and pay it to the state.

The head of the Revenue’s investigation and prosecutions division issued a stark warning yesterday to those who ignore the disclosure deadline.

“Revenue’s advice to anybody who has not declared past tax liabilities is: contact Revenue before Revenue contacts you,” said Paddy Donnelly.

“That is good advice at any time because voluntarily owning up to past tax evasion means not just being able to sleep easier, you also get very substantial benefits. There’s a guarantee that Revenue won’t investigate you for criminal prosecution; you won’t see details of your settlement published in the media; and you get a big reduction in penalties.”

By this time next week, Revenue will, for the first time, have received from banks and building societies automatic returns of interest paid on significant deposits going back to January 2005.

This will make it much harder for anybody who has evaded tax on a six-figure sum to keep it hidden.

Mr Donnelly said Revenue acknowledged that the vast majority of people with such sums of money in banks during the years in question had “absolutely no tax issues — the lodgments will have come from fully taxed income or gains or from transactions that have no tax implications”.

People in that category did not need to contact Revenue, he stressed.

But those who had evaded tax were best advised to make a disclosure by September 15, he said.

Since 2000, Revenue has recovered €2.45bn in evaded tax, including interest and penalties, from so-called “legacy” investigations — such as Dirt, bogus non-resident and offshore accounts.