Material interest
Tax deducted from the remuneration of directors or employees who have a material interest in the company paying their wages or salaries is denied until such tax has been remitted to the Collector-General (section 997A of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997).
This means that if a company goes into liquidation and the PAYE deducted from the directors’ pay is not remitted to the Revenue, then the director will have to pay this tax (again) in their personal tax return.
However, with the debt warehousing scheme brought in to assist businesses with cashflow during the Covid pandemic, a different arrangement is in place.
Hybrid employees cannot claim expenses for travelling between home and a centralised office
Revenue has confirmed that ‘if an employer is availing of debt warehousing for PAYE (Employer) liabilities, a director or employee with a material interest in the company cannot normally claim credit for PAYE deducted if it has been warehoused and not paid. However, if the director or employee is eligible for income tax warehousing, he or she can warehouse all liabilities, including any Schedule E liabilities.’ Section 6 of the guide has further explanation.
Expenses
An updated Tax and Duty Manual regarding the tax treatment of the reimbursed travel and subsistence expenses has been published. It reaffirms that that hybrid employees working part-time from home cannot claim expenses for travelling between home and a centralised office.
The manual also outlines the tax treatment for expenses incurred by non-executive directors in commercial companies, and expenses of travel and subsistence to members of non-commercial bodies and not-for-profit entities.
Businesses should take the opportunity to review their compliance with the requirements as non-compliance or mislabelling of wages as expenses may result in the Revenue considering ‘…whether there is any element of fraud or neglect involved or whether a Revenue offence may have been committed and will take whatever action it deems appropriate’.
Only 20% of Revenue Technical Service queries received a response within 20 working days
Revenue Annual Report
The Revenue’s 100th annual report shows there are now 3.6 million taxpayers registered with myAccount, 852,000 self-assessed taxpayers and 10,000 tax payers with debt payments arrangements.
The Revenue also publishes a summary of selected sectoral intervention results:
- Accounting, bookkeeping and auditing activities yielded an average €21,200 from 405 interventions, although this might have been skewed by one very large recently reported settlement.
- Construction yielded an average €4,600 from 6,852 interventions.
- Doctors yielded an average of €17,400 from 195 interventions.
- Solicitors, barristers and other legal activities yielded an average of €22,700 from 229 interventions.
- The rental sector yielded an average €11,300 from 1,452 interventions.
The Revenue’s customer service analysis shows that only 20% of Revenue Technical Service queries and 85% of MyEnquiries received a response within 20 working days.
Non-familiar customer identification documents
Accounting practices and other designated persons are required to undertake customer due diligence (CDD) for all clients. This involves checking a customer’s photo identification documents, such as their passport or driving licence.
The EU has a website with tools to validate identification documents from most countries
While most people are familiar with documents coming from Ireland and the UK, many are not as familiar with documents coming from more distant countries.
The EU has a website with photographs of the identification documents used in most of the world’s countries, along with tools to validate the documents’ numbers.
As an alternative to manual authentication, there are many applications on the market that for a fee will validate a photo identification document – some are listed here.
