In life, as the old saying goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes. The former is unavoidable and at best tax avoidance measures help to reduce the tax bill, but not to evade payment altogether. Tax evasion is illegal. And serious offenders face prosecution and a possible prison sentence for committing such a crime. However, revenue authorities are winning the battle against non-compliant taxpayers, by continually refining and improving their methods of tax scrutiny and collection. In this respect, Revenue has been greatly helped by advances in digital technology. As most tax returns are now completed and returned online, this has enabled Revenue to build a detailed profile of taxpayers.

Revenue Commissioners Chairman Josephine Feehily has provided an illustration of the organisation's efficiency and success in managing to collect more tax with less effort. Last year Revenue carried out few fewer audits of taxpayers – 8,000 compared with 11,000 in 2011. This change, which involved a less intrusive and more focused investigation approach by tax inspectors, has paid off, with more tax collected. As Ms Feehily said, instead of wasting time and money on expensive audits on compliant businesses, Revenue has adopted a more selective approach to greater effect. This new method, which involves much closer scrutiny of aspects of taxpayers' returns – by raising queries and checking transactions – and less reliance on audits, has proved more effective, and led Revenue to revise its handling of audit and compliance checks.

Certainly, the benefit of a more focused approach to tax collection has been illustrated in Revenue’s success in tackling those businesses in the black economy that fail to pay taxes. Equally, the amount of tax collected from holders of private pensions who had failed to pay tax owing on their State pension – where the tax collected so far (€89.5 million) is twice the original estimate – vindicates Revenue’s more targeted approach to ensuring full tax compliance and maximising tax revenue.