Sir, - I write with reference to your leader (February 12th) on the finance bill and increased revenue powers to obtain information. Please permit me respectfully to offer some thoughts on both from the standpoint of one mainly working within the UK tax code.
Your leader refers to the "inadequacy of the existing tax regime". Would it not be truer to say that the real inadequacy here is of the standards of compliance with tax legislation under the existing tax regime? And given that "duties of income tax are under the care and management of the Revenue Commissioners" is it totally heretical to entertain doubts about the quality of that "care and management" in the case of your Revenue Commissioners?
Given doubts about the said quality, and bearing in mind the need for those proper systems both of internal control and of external checks and balances which lie at the heart of a civilised tax system, I note with concern that there is virtually no non-Revenue Commissioner control on the seriously expanded revenue powers to obtain information set out in your finance bill. The UK gives generous liberties to its tax authorities, but only with the approval of an (independent) Appeal Commissioner. Why not with you?
Your article smacks of "Revenue-Commissioners-think", not least in its sadistic enthusiasm for prosecution in "high-profile" cases. May I respectfully recall that the goal in a tax system is the garnering of revenue to the State's coffers? Better surely by far to garner said revenue than to waste public money on prosecutions. This is, by and large, the UK approach (as outlined in the celebrated "Hansard Extract" read out at the outset of every serious tax investigation case). Within that approach, legal process is used very sparingly indeed. Furthermore, indiscriminate use of the threat of legal action creates uncertainty which deters both taxpayers and their advisers from that co-operation necessary to undo the damage to the public purse as best possible.
In conclusion, I have read with disquiet in your pages of the scandals ventilated in various tribunals and been galled at the clemency extended in cases, wherein in my humble view there was heinous tax fraud of the worst possible type. In seeking, though, to bring to an end such a state of affairs, you would do well to bear in mind that your Revenue Commissioners are but human beings, and that as such they can make mistakes. If serious irruption into the private affairs of any individual is going to take place, it should do so with proper independent checks on the manner of that irruption and without creating legal limbos for taxpayers and tax advisers alike due to indiscriminate use of prosecution. -Yours, etc.,
Philip G. Gormley, Garden Street, Magherafelt, Co. Derry.