Delays using the Revenue Commissioners' online tax-filing system may have cost Irish businesses €3 million, according to the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CPA).
The figure is based on a CPA survey of 81 of its members, which found that the average time lost due to dealing with difficulties using the Revenue's online system (ROS) was 21 hours for each firm.
The Revenue is now talking to representative bodies on how ROS, which is broadly welcomed as a significant modernisation of the Revenue Commissioner's tax-filing system, can be improved for next year.
On November 21st alone, the final day for the online filing of 2002 tax returns, self-employed people paid almost €200 million in tax over the internet.
As a result of a system slowdown, the Revenue was forced to announce that it would "be taking a sensible and pragmatic approach" to late filings.
Mr Alan Farrelly, president of the CPA, said the Revenue's failure to grant a formal filing extension reflected a worrying attitude toward accountants and tax practitioners.
Issues highlighted by the CPA included the inability to file returns at peak times, insufficient telephone support and the issuing of incorrect notices of assessment.
"The Revenue Commissioners must issue guarantees that the processing capacity of the Revenue online system will match the anticipated usage levels before next year's tax deadline," Mr Farrelly said. A spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners said ROS had been a victim of its own success.
The Revenue had doubled resources and increased hours on the ROS helpdesk, the spokesmansaid.
There had been access problems, but these were nearly all caused by the numbers who signed up to file online over the last few weeks.
There was a relatively small number of cases where incorrect notices of assessment had been issued, but no taxpayer was debited twice and that the Revenue was in the process of rectifying the errors, the Revenue spokesman said.
Most people accepted that taking a pragmatic approach to late filings where people had genuine difficulties was a reasonable response by the Revenue, he added.
A spokesman for the Institute of Taxation said it had advised the Revenue of problems in the run-up to October 31st.
"The Revenue would have known that there were 30,000 or 35,000 returns due to come in this week. It's not as if these taxpayers came out of the woodwork. We all knew there would be a rush, as there is every year," he said.
"It is not acceptable that an electronic filing system would not be able to cope with returns made legitimately and on time."
A spokesman for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI), the largest accountancy body, said its members had also experienced difficulties, but said it was difficult to quantify the numbers involved.
