Revenue Audit Focus

The Revenue Commissioners released their annual report on Thursday 23 April 2009. Chairwoman Josephine Feehily said that they will be targeting cash businesses as a high risk of non-compliance occurs in these industries, e.g. security, pubs, barristers, retail units.

Depending on the degree and timescale of non-compliance, when interest and penalties are added your unpaid tax bill could be doubled.

Revenue is well aware of the economic downturn and is not interested in simply “making a difficult situation worse”. If you have difficulties paying your liabilities on time it is important to enter negotiations with Revenue rather than under-returning amounts. If you are selected for Revenue Audit, it is important not to panic. In some instances the audit may be part of a wider investigation of some of your suppliers or customers.

Having a proper system for recording all transactions with complete audit trail will make any possible Revenue investigation more straight forward and will make it easier to lend support to the completeness of your cash sales records.