Coming home ! Saved into Irish account when away

Just looking for some advice regarding someone who has just returned home having worked in the UK for the past 4 years. He was paying UK tax etc for his entire stay. He has returned home to work here and eventually buy a house. While in the UK he transferred savings home every month towards his house deposit. He intends to continue adding to that account with his Irish salary until he has enough saved to approach the banks. Someone mentioned that Revenue might come after him for tax on the savings account as he is now an Irish resident again.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

ledger said:

Someone mentioned that Revenue might come after him for tax on the savings account as he is now an Irish resident again.

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On the basis that he can't claim an exemption from DIRT on that basis that he is non resident any more, he should inform the bank of his change of residence.

He might qualify for the DIRT exemption for FTB http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/dirt/first-time-buyer-relief.html

Liability would be tiny I'd expect given where interest rates are. Remember, tax is only applied on the interest he/she received - not the capital amounts saved, which he would already have paid UK income tax on.

Tell him to check his account statements to see if interest was paid net of DIRT. I'm in the US and interest on our Irish deposit accounts are paid net of DIRT. We just keep transfering cash back into our old deposit accounts & never informed the Banks we were leaving. As such the Banks haven't change any of our account details it would seem - maybe your friend specifically opened a non-resident account.

It's probably your friend had an ordinary account and has already paid the DIRT so there should not be any issue. Remember that everybody is obliged to declare their bank interest on their bank accounts savings and I believe there is something relatively new on this in relation to USC (perhaps one of the tax guys can clarify - is that for self employed people maybe)

Thanks a million folks for the sound advice. He didn't inform the bank that he had left as he was coming home every couple of weeks. It's just an ordinary deposit account that he opened when he was in college. As Andy said, I reckon the liability (if any) would be miniscule. I'll show him this thread and put his mind at ease. Thanks again

He can probably get the DIRT back for the period during which he was away...you can go back four years.

Cheers Gordon !