Off-shore inquiriesIn just one year, the Revenue Commissioners, has collected €650 million from 11,000 individuals who had salted away vast sums of money in Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the UK and Switzerland.
This brings to €1.5 billion the amount collected from the various inquiries in recent years. And there's more to come.
Some 60 per cent of those who have availed of the latest scheme for undisclosed offshore funds had put money into financial institutions in Northern Ireland in the hope of concealing its existence from the Irish tax authorities.
About 30 per cent of these tax dodgers used offshore trusts and other vehicles, that were managed for them primarily in subsidiaries of Irish banks based in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Another 10 per cent had chosen the UK and Switzerland as a home for their untaxed stash.
Some €150 million of these monies rolled into the Revenue after it told Bank of Ireland to write to its customers who held trusts in its bank in Jersey, advising them to settle their tax affairs.
Another €46 million came on foot of similar letters to customers of Irish Life & Permanent's Isle of Man subsidiary. Since then Mr Daly has met with the chief executives of 10 Irish financial institutions who were asked to also write to customers of their offshore companies to stress the benefits of voluntarily disclosure.
In all some 15,000 people contacted the tax authorities about a possible tax liability and these paid a further €500 million before last Thursday's deadline. Between 500 and 1,000 individuals asked the Revenue for more time to regularise their affairs, with some stating that they needed to dispose of other assets before they could write a cheque.
Over the next few days and weeks their payments are expected to yield many more millions. Up to 3,000 others were deemed to have only a small tax bill or didn't owe the State any funds. Revenue chairman, Mr Frank Daly, has described its €650 million haul as "a satisfactory outcome" to the initial phase of this particular investigation.
Not only has it extracted huge amounts of cash from individuals who had turned a blind eye to the State's tax laws for many a year, but it has also levied significant penalties and interest on top of their original liabilities, often amounting to about two-thirds of their final tax bill.
The exercise has also brought them into the tax net and the Revenue believes that they will now probably stay there. Mr Daly says that "if they have any sense at all" those who have now settled their affairs will continue to pay their dues in the future.
Those who are still holding out and haven't made any attempt to make a voluntary settlement with the Revenue might note that while it collected €227 million from the holders of bogus non-resident accounts during a voluntary incentive scheme, it added a further €300 million from those who decided to "brass it out" and wait until they were caught.
The Revenue Commissioner's powers to force financial institutions to surrender details in relation to their customer's accounts proved a powerful tool in that investigation. It has also subsequently been granted powers to demand that these institutions also hand over details of customers who have accounts at subsidiary companies in other jurisdictions.
In this regard, the next part of this investigation will prove more problematic than the bogus non-resident accounts inquiry. Mr Daly and his colleagues will be largely relying on the goodwill of the Irish financial institutions to assist them in their quest for information on their customers.
Mr Daly said that so far it has received a "fairly positive" response from them and suggested they would be unwise to impede its inquiries as the Revenue was prepared to take the legal route if necessary.
