The Irish Tax Institute has warned that the proposed amendments in the General Scheme of the Finance (Tax Appeals and Fiscal Responsibility) Bill 2025, if enacted, would make Ireland a European outlier, adding that there is no compelling reason to change the current system for tax appeals.
Representatives from the Institute have appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach to discuss the Bill.
Under the existing rules governing hearings at the Tax Appeals Commission (TAC), the default position is that where a taxpayer desires a private hearing they can apply to the TAC and the Appeal Commissioners must accede to this request. Once a tax appeal hearing is held in private, the Appeal Commissioner’s published determination of that appeal is anonymised to ensure the identity of the taxpayer is not disclosed.
The proposed legislation will fundamentally change the current provisions by granting the Appeal Commissioners with the discretion to decide if a tax appeal hearing should be held in public or in private and by limiting the redaction of TAC determinations to cases where there are “special and limited circumstances”.
The Institute has undertaken comprehensive comparative research on the tax dispute resolution processes which exist in 20 EU member states, demonstrating that Ireland’s current regime sits comfortably within the European norm.
Speaking ahead of the Oireachtas appearance, Institute President Shane Wallace said: “The overwhelming trend across EU jurisdictions is that published tax appeal decisions—where publication occurs at all—are anonymised or redacted to protect taxpayer privacy. Our analysis indicates that approximately 85% of the member states reviewed do not publish identifiable taxpayer information and 95% do not publish identifying information where the taxpayer is an individual.”
He said there was no compelling reason to change the current system. “It’s clear that Ireland’s current approach—public determinations, anonymised where the hearing was private—already reflects this widely adopted standard in the EU. This approach also ensures that the wider public can understand how decisions are made, how the law is applied and what reasoning underpins those decisions without compromising a person’s personal circumstances.”
Representatives from the Institute voiced their profound concerns that if the decision regarding whether an appeal hearing will be held in private or in public is at the discretion of the Appeal Commissioner rather than the taxpayer, it will compel more taxpayers into paying a liability that they consider to have been incorrectly assessed, rather than proceeding with a public hearing – as the TAC is the only route of appeal against tax assessments in Ireland.
They said there is a major distinction between a taxpayer who has a genuine technical dispute with Revenue and a taxpayer who appears on the List of Tax Defaulters for a serious failure to comply with their tax obligations.
The Institute has also received legal opinion that finds that the proposed Bill has over-interpreted the judgment of the 2021 Zalewski vs WRC Supreme Court case. In that instance, it was simply the "absolute ban" on public hearings at the WRC that was found to be unconstitutional. The TAC currently has no such "absolute ban". The current default is for a public hearing with the right to elect for a private hearing.
