Fiddle taxes at your peril!

Shops and restaurants in Meath who try to avoid tax in these tough times by not recording all their cash transactions have been warned they will be caught! The Revenue Commissioners are wise to all sorts of moves in cash businesses to avoid tax and the staff of the new district Revenue Office in Navan say they have been successful to date in apprehending many tax defaulters. They add they have the technology and the power to catch out tax cheats in the county and deal with them through the courts. Meath District Manager with the Revenue Commissioners, Declan Rigney, said they were concerned in these difficult economic times that there would be an increase in efforts by businesses dealing in cash to avoid paying tax. 'There is, generally speaking, an increased element of tax evasion during a recession and we intend stopping it, before it takes root,' he said. The Commissioners have an ongoing programme of visits to premises operating in cash to ensure they are not concealing money. 'We have trained personnel who can 'interrogate" cash registers and they will be visiting pubs, shops, restaurants and take-aways where there is a lot of cash going in and out,' Mr Rigney said. 'They can get information from the till that may not be recorded in the books,' he warned. Among the activities they have detected in Meath include the suppression of sales on the till by ringing up 'no sale" and putting cash in the drawer and using certain buttons to record discounts or refunds which are never made. Another attempt to avoid tax which they have come across involves one till in a linked system of four or five being left off the system for a period. 'We can detect this sort of thing by interrogating the hard drive of the tills,' he added. Mr Rigney explained that they also have the power to seek third party information, and tax inspectors can contact suppliers to a business and take extracts from their records to see what they have supplied to the outlet under investigation. 'So if you are buying your supplies in cash, we can still get a record of them,' he said. He also pointed out that they can also get records from cash and carry businesses across the border on people here who buy in cash in Northern Ireland. 'Another area we are looking at is where people are being paid under the counter. We have developed a strategy in conjunction with the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the National Employers Rights Authority. We have 33 officers who participate in these investigations going after lost taxes, PRSI and levies and the infringements of employers rights.' Mr Rigney pointed out that banks, building societies, credit unions and the post office must now give information on any accounts earning deposit interest over €100,000. 'DIRT tax is stopped on those accounts automatically, but what we will be looking at is the source of the funds that gives rise to that interest. Was it the proceeds of a sale we weren"t told about?' he said. 'We have a commitment and duty to keep a level playing field for those who do meet their commitments.' Mr Rigney said he appreciated in these tough economic times that businesses are finding it difficult and if a business is struggling to meet its commitments, then it can talk to Revenue who will be prepared to listen. 'We are not in the business of putting viable businesses out of operation,' he added. The new Revenue Offices on Abbey Road in Navan deal with all taxes and duties for people living in Meath or whose business is in Meath. They look after 30,000 business taxpayers and 83,000 PAYE employees. The office opened in January of last year.