Who will collect our taxes?

An Saoi: Staffing in the Office of the Revenue Commissioners was already a concern when this PQ was asked on 3rd July 2008. The same question was asked on 19th January 2012 and received the following reply.

Below is a Table summarising the level of decline.

The decline is most extreme amongst male staff, particularly those involved in operational and specialist areas, with an overall 27.2% decline in male staff at the three grades.

The figures for 1st March may indeed be an overestimate. They include 28 staff over 60 and 362 staff over 55. It is questionable whether many of those people will stay.
While there are “… discussions on how to address critical skills losses that will arise due to these retirements”, it is clearly a bit late in the day: this problem was clear to many four years ago. There seems little danger of receiving an audit notification in the next few years at least.

Losses in the Revenue are disproportionate to other Government services and are being implanted at a critical time for the State when maximising tax collection is crucial. Such slashing of staff numbers raise major questions as to the ability of the Revenue to effectively police tax, customs and excise collection and doubts of the Government’s ability to reach its tax targets.