The President of the Irish Tax Institute, Shane Wallace, has warned that the proposed amendments in the General Scheme of the Finance (Tax Appeals and Fiscal Responsibility) Bill 2025 will have a "chilling effect" on taxpayers.
Mr Wallace was commenting as the Irish Tax Institute made its submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Finance which is currently examining the Bill at Pre-Legislative Scrutiny stage.
Under the existing rules governing hearings at the Tax Appeals Commission (TAC), the default position is that where a taxpayer desires a ‘in camera’ (i.e. 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 camera’ and by limiting the redaction of TAC determinations to cases where there are “special and limited circumstances”.
As part of the Institute’s submission, it conducted a survey of members and received 223 detailed responses. The responses outlined profound concerns about fairness, privacy and the effective functioning of the tax system should the proposed amendments proceed.
Members highlighted the fact that tax matters are inherently private, involving sensitive personal and commercial information and that tax disputes heard at the TAC often arise from differing interpretations of complex legislation, genuine errors or legitimate disagreements about tax treatment. They emphasised the difference between this process and the tax defaulters list, which involves taxpayers who have not cooperated with Revenue and engaged in serious non-compliance. They argued that making this information public could distort competition, harm commercial interests or provide undue advantages to competitors as well as cause reputational damage, in particular where complex disputes about the technical application of rules could end up being inaccurately portrayed as aggressive tax avoidance.
Members also voiced their fears 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.
Comparisons with other jurisdictions were also pointed to with Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and The Netherlands having tax appeal hearings in private. Other jurisdictions with significantly larger populations than Ireland, such as Canada, France and the UK, do have public hearings of tax appeals, however, those jurisdictions also have alternative avenues available to taxpayers to resolve tax disputes in private before resorting to a public hearing of their appeal. In Ireland, the TAC is the sole avenue available for a taxpayer to resolve disputes regarding tax assessments with Revenue. Therefore, if the changes proposed in the Tax Appeals Bill were implemented, it would make Ireland an outlier compared with the procedures which exist for the resolution of tax disputes in other jurisdictions.
Members also stressed that the current provision, whereby the Appeal Commissioner’s determination of an appeal is published in detail in an anonymised manner, already strikes a careful balance between transparency and privacy, allowing non-binding precedents to develop and scrutiny to occur.
Commenting, Mr. Wallace said, “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. However, should the proposed changes proceed we believe it will have ‘a chilling effect’ and result in more taxpayers deciding to ‘settle’ their appeal rather than proceed with a hearing.
“Genuine appellants settling prematurely, not because the Revenue Commissioners have the stronger legal argument, but because the reputational risk of public exposure is too high, fundamentally undermines the basis of a case being taken on merit. It also 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.
The current position whereby detailed determinations are published with identities anonymised already achieves a satisfactory position without sacrificing fairness or privacy. It ensures that the wider public can understand how decisions are made, how the law is applied, and what reasoning underpins those decisions. We are urging the Government not to proceed with the proposed move to public hearings of tax appeals,” he concluded.
