Medical consultants cough up €23m in unpaid taxes

Revenue secured €23m from medical consultants in unpaid taxes last year, a jump of 44%.

The swoop was part of special investigations of risky sectors, including construction, the rental market, and the licensed trade.

The €642.5m raised from the compliance investigations fed into an overall collection of €45.79bn by Revenue in 2015. This represented the fifth successive annual increase in returns to the exchequer and the second biggest on record.

The Revenue Annual Report for 2015 showed the rise was driven by surges in Corporation Tax (up 49%), Capital Gains Tax (up 28%), and Vat (up 7%).

Revenue chairman Niall Cody said they would be examining Irish links to the so-called Panama Papers — files exposing offshore funds squirrelled away by businesses and people around the world.

The report said there was a 5% rise in yield from audit and compliance investigations, totalling €642.5m. It said there were 360 open compliance interventions under its medical consultants project in 2015, 170 of which were closed.

The interventions resulted in tax settlements of almost €23m, compared to €16m in 2014, up 44%.

The report noted since the project began, a total of 639 compliance interventions had been conducted on medical consultants.

It added: “Revenue continues to open compliance interventions in the medical consultants’ sector and expects to conclude further significant settlements during the course of 2016.”

It said the rise in overall returns — up 11% to €46bn — reflected a “strong trading performance supported by increasing domestic consumption and investment”.

The number of contracts rose by 16% and the value by 10% to €31.7m. Companies wound up via creditor voluntary liquidations fell by 27% and, through court orders, by 37% while receiverships dropped by 49%.

It said “many businesses and individuals” still experienced financial hardship and that outstanding debt increased by 7% to €117m.

The report said 67.9m units in illicit cigarettes (worth €34m) were seized, compared to 53m in 2014. There were 4,826 drug seizures worth €23m.