Sir, - I note that the Minister of Finance is proposing to change the tax year in the Republic of Ireland to a calendar one. He also announces his intention to bring forward accounts filing requirements for clients of firms such as mine by, in effect, four months.
Your tax inspectors are threatening to go on strike because they are so overworked. And there is a potential deluge of work for the accountancy and tax consultant professions deriving from the revelations of your DIRT enquiry, not to mention the numerous other high-level evasion schemes which have recently come to light in Ireland.
On the mercifully infrequent occasions when I try to contact tax districts in Dublin, I find they are, in effect, inaccessible. When I do finally get through, the charming ladies on the telephone explain that the unavailability is due to the pressures of work on the staff within the district.
Tax officials are but the servants of the business fraternity who in the last analysis pay their wages. It is also salutary to recall that the purpose of taxation is the garnering of revenue to the Exchequer. May one ask what the revenue benefit to the State may be with this change?
It will be recalled that your Revenue Commissioners came out of the DIRT inquiry with grave doubts hanging over the quality of their "care and management" of the Irish tax system. In such a context, it would seem logical that they should be forced to prove to the satisfaction of their "customers/victims" that this reform may be justified by reference to the type of criteria set out above. In the context we know about, it smacks to this writer of insanity. - Yours, etc.,
Philip G. Gormley, Chartered Accountant, Garden Street, Magherafelt, Co Derry.