Revenue Letters!

Revenue Letters!

Revenue has recently written a letter to all taxpayers who filed an Income Tax return form 11 for 2015.

This letter covers two issues;

  1. Making taxpayers aware that it is possible to self-correct tax returns if there were any errors or omissions in them
  2. Advising taxpayers that if they have any undeclared income or gains arising from assets that they hold outside of Ireland there are advantages to addressing this before the 30th April 2017

Firstly we would say that if your tax affairs are fully in order there is no cause for concern whatsoever and there is no need to reply to Revenue or take any action.

In the event that you are concerned that you may have made an error or omission with your tax return then you should of course correct that return and it is to your benefit to do that in the event of any possible future Revenue enquiry.

If you have undeclared offshore income or gains, or your offshore income or gains haven’t been returned correctly on your tax return, then you should avail of getting this in order before the end of April as there are many advantages to doing that. An example of this would be where an offshore income was returned for Capital Gains Tax but the correct treatment would have been to return it as Income.

We would point out that even though the letters are addressed to taxpayers under self-assessment this letter would equally apply to PAYE taxpayers, Corporates and Trusts in terms of self-correcting returns and undeclared offshore income.

Please note offshore is anywhere outside the Republic of Ireland, so if you have rents, dividends, interest, pensions or other income or gains that you haven’t declared, then you have a limited timeframe to get this corrected. So please contact your tax adviser if;

  1. You have errors or omissions in your tax returns
  2. You have undeclared income or gains from offshore sources

If you need to discuss any of the issues raised please get in touch.