Almost all claims for income tax penalty remissions approved

Almost all requests for the remission of interest and penalties incurred when income tax was not paid have been approved. The 2015 annual report of the Revenue Remissions Supervisory Board, tabled in Parliament last Monday, indicated the taxman approved 1,169 of the 1,200 processed demands for remission. “Far too many taxpayers were obviously aware that the use of the term ‘cash flow problems’ in their remission requests would entitle them to remissions,” remarked the supervisory board. It added that the situation where the “excuse – cash flow problems – is blindly accepted for the granting of remissions” was “unacceptable”. Concluding its annual report, the board commented that the legal provisions empowering the Commissioner for Revenue to remit interest and penalties when tax is not paid “due to a reasonable cause”, were “rather vague”. It queried what would qualify as a reasonable cause and the tools available to the taxman to decide upon the veracity and reasonableness of such requests, which sometimes include a “touch of arrogance” by the taxpayers, who threaten to sack their employees if their demands are not accepted. The requests ballooned from nine in 2003, to 457 the...