Financial institutions would have had to pay £75 million instead of £3 million in penalties for non-payment of DIRT if the legal criteria applied to individuals were used. The assessment was made at the DIRT inquiry sub-committee yesterday.
The law required that financial institutions, as intermediaries, were not liable to pay the same penalties as individuals.
The chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Mr Dermot Quigley, was asked about the look-back audit to 1986, carried out on the financial institutions to assess DIRT liability.
Mr Quigley said the total amount of liabilities determined by the auditors was £173 million, which was paid in full. Of this, £70 million was tax, almost £100 million was statutory interest going back to 1986 and £3 million was penalties.
"We are satisfied, based on the legal advice we received, that we have charged the appropriate penalties due in accordance with the law." In future the Revenue would be setting out detailed guidelines for compliance with the requirements of the DIRT legislation. It would also be undertaking regular audits of compliance using existing powers.
Mr Quigley said the penalty regime was set down in law. The penalty was dealt with on a sample basis rather than an extrapolated basis.
Mr Eamonn O'Dea, senior inspector of taxes, Revenue, said given that the sample represented about 4 per cent of accounts and the sample produced a penalty of £3 million on the basis of its legal advice, if one were to estimate it on an extrapolated basis the figure would have been £75 million.
Mr Pat Rabbitte TD (Lab) asked if penalties imposed on an institution could be more than those charged to the individual.
Mr Quigley replied: "Yes, because there are different regimes in the law, because the individual we're talking about, if it's that person's own income, the law requires a different penalty regime and its a tax-related penalty." Mr Quigley said no prosecutions were contemplated as a result of the audit. There was no way the Revenue could have parallel aims, for instance with a view to prosecution and the other with a view to recovering tax. If it had adopted the prosecution mode, it would never have recovered the £173 million. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr James Hamilton, opposed the idea of a special prosecutor for tax offences and a separate court for revenue cases.
The DPP told the sub-committee he would not be in favour of breaking up the prosecution service into different units. "I think it's important that we maintain a consistency and a unity so far as criminal prosecution is concerned and the same standards."