We thank the Committee for your invitation to attend this meeting as you consider the Finance (Tax Appeals and Fiscal Responsibility) Bill 2025.
The Irish Tax Institute is the leading educational and representative body for Ireland’s Chartered Tax Advisers (CTA) and is the only professional body exclusively dedicated to tax. We have some 6,000 members who in turn provide tax advice and expertise to thousands of businesses, multinationals and individuals.
The Institute has made two detailed submissions to the Committee in respect of this Bill - which are primarily concerned with Head 5, Amendments arising from the 2021 Supreme Court judgment in respect of Zalewski v the Workplace Relations Commission - and in this brief opening statement we will attempt to summarise those submissions.
Our submissions included:
- a summary of more than 220 detailed responses to a survey of members which was undertaken in December 2025 and which found profound concerns among members about privacy and the effective functioning of the tax system should the proposed amendments in relation to public hearings proceed;
- a Senior Counsel legal opinion which confirms that nothing in Zalewski mandates the proposed changes; and
- comprehensive comparative research on the tax dispute resolution processes which exist in other EU Member States, demonstrating that Ireland’s current regime sits comfortably within the European norm.
As members will be aware, currently, taxpayers who disagree with a tax assessment from Revenue can appeal to the Tax Appeals Commission (TAC). The TAC is the only route of appeal against tax assessments in Ireland. While hearings are public by default, taxpayers can request a private (“in camera”) hearing, which must be acceded to, and determinations from such hearings are anonymised. The proposed legislation will fundamentally change this by giving Appeal Commissioners discretion over whether hearings are private or public and restrict anonymisation of decisions to “special and limited circumstances”.
An appeal at the TAC involves a taxpayer challenging the State, which in this case is the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. Appeals often arise as a result of differing interpretations of complex legislation, genuine errors or legitimate disagreements about the tax treatment. In many cases, a taxpayer will be required to give evidence and be cross examined by Revenue’s counsel at the tax appeal hearing, sometimes for several hours about their confidential financial affairs.
Reduced access to justice and an imbalance of power between taxpayers and the State
Any legislative reform must be assessed not only for its impact on transparency, but also on its effect on the practical ability of taxpayers—particularly individuals and small businesses—to challenge decisions of Revenue.
Our survey of members found that the overwhelming majority believe that if the decision regarding whether an appeal hearing will be held ‘in camera’ 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.
Genuine appellants settling prematurely, not because Revenue have the stronger legal argument, but because the commercial, privacy and reputational risk of public exposure is too high, fundamentally undermines the basis of a case being taken on merit. It means the balance of power shifts further away from the taxpayer, who may be punished in the court of public opinion for daring to contest an assessment, and towards the State.
Loss of privacy and potential reputational harm
For many taxpayers, the prospect of a public hearing—where sensitive personal or commercial information may be aired—poses a genuine deterrent to initiating an appeal at all.
It’s worth noting that when the possibility of public hearings before the TAC was considered by the Oireachtas some 10 years ago, the Oireachtas Finance Committee favoured a system where the taxpayer has the option to have a private hearing. The then Minister of State in the Department of Finance, and current Tánaiste, Simon Harris TD, also agreed that Government did not “want to have an appeals system that would in any way discourage persons from their right of appealing a decision of the Revenue Commissioners.”
At the time the Tánaiste expressed concerns around individual privacy which are as relevant today as they were then.
Discourse around taxation tends to be emotive and our members have serious concerns around how a taxpayer who has a genuine technical dispute with Revenue before the TAC will be distinguished, in public, from a taxpayer who appears on the List of Tax Defaulters for a serious failure to comply with their tax obligations.
Zalewski does not require tax appeals to be heard in public
It is important to point out that the judgement in Zalewski, from which these proposed amendments stem, does not require tax appeals to be heard in public. In the Zalewski case, Justice O’Donnell was clear in his judgment that public hearings were by no means an absolute requirement and that it may be permissible to have a presumption in favour of private hearings at first instance. It was simply the ‘absolute ban’ on public hearings at the WRC that were unconstitutional. The TAC has no such ‘absolute ban’. The current default is for a public hearing with the right to elect for a private hearing.
The legal opinion we have received confirms this and in fact finds that the proposed Bill, has over-interpreted the effects of Zalewski. Our legal opinion establishes that the Oireachtas has a significant level of discretion and a range of options open to it. Amongst the constitutionally permissible options would, in the opinion of Senior Counsel, be a continuation of the current statutory approach, something which we strongly advocate for.
Ireland will become an outlier
Our comparative research examined the options available to taxpayers for the resolution of tax disputes in 20 EU Member States. While the approach taken to tax appeal hearings varies significantly, our findings show that should the proposed changes be enacted, Ireland would become a clear outlier compared with the privacy protections which exist in the procedures for resolving tax disputes in other Countries.
From our findings we know that a significant proportion of EU Member States already provide taxpayers with the ability to have tax appeals heard privately or through written procedures that do not involve public hearings. Many Member States—including Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, and Romania—either allow private hearings as a matter of course or conduct the substantive appeal largely or entirely in writing, thereby greatly limiting public disclosure. In several countries (e.g. Slovakia), even the outcome of such proceedings remains confidential under tax secrecy rules.
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.
It’s clear that Ireland’s current approach—public determinations, anonymised where the hearing was private—already reflects this widely adopted standard. 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.
In closing Chair, we believe it is important for the Committee to note that on average over the past four years, of the determinations issued by the TAC, approximately 20% were in favour of the taxpayer. This clearly demonstrates that in a significant number of cases, where a taxpayer genuinely disagrees with an assessment, pursuing an appeal leads to a different and fairer outcome. Should the amendments proceed as planned, this will likely no longer be the case.
We have some copies of our detailed submissions available should members require them and we look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you.
