The Revenue Commissioners are investigating 89 cases of serious tax and customs evasion, figures released yesterday show.
The Revenue yesterday published its headline results for 2012 which showed that, during the year, 25 people were convicted of serious tax offences and the same number were found guilty of serious customs breaches. The figures also show that the commissioners are investigating 86 serious tax evasion cases and three customs serious offences, a total of 89 between the two categories.
Jail sentences
Serious offences are those tried by a jury and can attract jail sentences, heavy fines or both. Along with the cases now being investigated, there are 45 with the Revenue Solicitors’ Office, 37 before the courts, three being considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions and 21 where the DPP has made a recommendation, but which have yet to go to court. The revenue got an extra €7.67 million from “other prosecutions”,which included almost 1,900 cases of taxpayers not making tax returns, oil-laundering, excise offences and fraud.
Exchequer gets €210m
Collection enforcement, which included forced sales, bankruptcy, receiverships, attachment orders, sheriffs’ proceedings and attachment orders, yielded €210 million for the exchequer.
During the year, Customs officials seized €101 million worth of illegal drugs, criminal cash, alcohol, tobacco and cigarettes, and counterfeit goods.
Customs seized 95.6 million illegal cigarettes in a total of 8,105 shipments, 400,000 individual items of counterfeit goods from over 6,000 shipments and 32,834 litres of alcohol.
Audits and other compliance interventions yielded almost €500 million for the exchequer from a total of 537,822 different cases.
The figures also show that, in 2012, the total tax take was €36.65 billion.
Income tax made the biggest contribution at over €15 billion and VAT came in second at €10 billion.
Companies operating in the Republic paid just over €4 billion in corporation tax. Capital gains and capital acquisition taxes yielded €697.4 million .
The Revenue Commissioners’ administrative budget was €382.15 million.
On December 31st, they employed 5,732 people, compared with 5,962 people at the start of the year.
