Indo - "Revenue is chasing tens of thousands of pensioners over owed tax"

Impressive evidence of some wonderfully creative imaginations in overdrive on this thread; and, as the fella says, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

I'm happy to leave ye to it.

Here's some reading material for the information hungry among you:

Customer charter

Revenue's service charter reflects the mutual expectations of Revenue and its customers. It seeks to ensure that our organisation conforms to the highest principles of professional public service.
www.revenue.ie www.revenue.ie
 
Typical Indo, dramatic headline seeking to get clicks

The letters in question are not tax demands. The letters are part of letters going out to 260k people who may have underpaid or overpaid taxes. So some of the people impacted are owed money by the state. The letters seemingly are telling people what to do to check their end of year statement and file a return.

It would be helpful if anyone on here has got such a letter and could post a copy of it.

And yes, it will stress some people out because lets be honest, any brown envelope with a harp on it makes us all a bit nervous. But for a lot of people, it is easily dealt with and the amounts due (if any) will be small. For those who owe large amounts, I have less sympathy for.

Some people will stuggle to do a return (dementia, lack of computer skills etc) but most should be able to do so, or engage a child/grandchild to assist.
 
Marsupial said:
some wonderfully creative imaginations in overdrive
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My own wonderfully creative imagination is now in overdrive and thinking that the whole palaver is a PR smokescreen to move on from the devastating news earlier in the week that one-in-seven of Revenue staff are being overpaid, some handsomely so, and with apparently no negative consequences for anyone.

If it was anything else, they wouldn't be initiating it at the height of the holiday season.
 
T McGibney said:
My own wonderfully creative imagination is now in overdrive and thinking that the whole palaver is a PR smokescreen to move on from the devastating news earlier in the week that one-in-seven of Revenue staff are being overpaid, some handsomely so, and with apparently no negative consequences for anyone.
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hmm....., a cunning plan in the Irish public sector. Are you giving them too much credit?
 
Interesting thread.

I recently filed my 2024 tax return. I started to receive my state pension last year 2024 and as indicated by others, my DSP pension was also listed, BUT tax did not seem to be deducted. I made an enquiry as I reckoned i owed more tax and want it sorted sooner rather than later. My UK state pension, which also started in 2024 and which i had declared myself, WAS taken into account for tax purposes so it was odd that the Irish state pension, which had been filled in automatically, was not.

A revenue mistake perhaps as mentioned earlier? I await an answer to my enquiry.
 
I'm due to move from invalidity pension to state pension in September. Do I have to inform revenue through enquiries on 'my account' ?
 
Stitcher said:
BUT tax did not seem to be deducted
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Were your tax credits reduced to account for it as described here?

Indo - "Revenue is chasing tens of thousands of pensioners over owed tax"

I know they aren't doing a return but my point is that revenue have the data. Or at least I think they have. So the employer (pension scheme) operates paye and revenue also know that they have a state pension. So it’s more likely than not that tax is due. I don’t think it’s a big deal to get...
www.askaboutmoney.com
 
No, as I only received pensions in 2024. I expect them to be reduced for 2025. I plan to phone revenue in the next week as I would like a revised tax credit statement issued asap so tax is deducted from my current work pension so my tax bill is not major when I do my 2025 return next year.
 
Stitcher said:
No, as I only received pensions in 2024. I expect them to be reduced for 2025.
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That's not how Revenue describe how it works.
And it's not my experience with Jobseeker's Benefit and Illness Benefit where the credits were reduced for the year in which I received the payments.
 
Yes, I was expecting that the Irish state pension would have been included in the calculation of of my tax, as the pension amount was inputed automatically by revenue. But by my calculations I still owed the equivalent of 40% of my state pension so it looked like it was omitted from the calculation. As I said, I sent off an enquiry about two weeks ago and have not heard anything back yet.
 
If @Stitcher is typical of the pensioners getting these letters, the issue seems to be one of incorrect Form 11 completion...

@Stitcher, the F11 return is pre-populated with DSP pension income for your information to assist you in completing the form, but you have to undertake some form of action to formally confirm / enter the amount of the income in your self-assessment. It seems that you didn't do that, and made a self-assessment that omitted the income. It's a fundamental of a self-assessment system that the taxpayer has to enter (or perhaps transcribe in this case) their income figures and be responsible for making a complete and correct self-assessment.

If that has happened across tens of thousands of people, it suggests that the user interface for the form must not be clear enough, or give enough guidance to users. At a minimum you'd think there should be some kind of validation prompt ("Are you sure you had no DSP Pension Income?"), if the self-assessment is going to omit a source that Revenue are pretty sure exists...

I'm not a Form 11 filer, nor have I completed one on behalf of anyone else since the information started to come pre-populated, but it's pretty foolproof when doing a PAYE return, where you confirm your employment income details (insofar as I don't think you could easily fail to confirm the amount of the employment income and get a balancing statement that omits it!)

Edited to add:
Looking at the numbers involved, I'm skeptical that this is the sole / main issue driving 68,000 letters to pensioners, as this would be a huge proportion of the cohort of Form 11- filing pensioners.
 
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torblednam said:
It's a fundamental of a self-assessment system that the taxpayer has to enter (or perhaps transcribe in this case) their income figures and be responsible for making a complete and correct self-assessment.
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Are you sure this is the case? It just sounds like very old thinking.

It would be far simpler if the user was presented with the correctly prepopulated information (as happens for example when a bank customer lodges a cheque at an ATM) and was simply asked to either to confirm or correct the information as presented.

Another major problem stems from the annual delays on Revenue's part in having full income data prepopulated onto tax returns. I don't know for certain but if I complete a Form 11 2025 tax return in January or February 2026, the earlier I do so the more likely it will lack prepopulated income data.

And I would imagine that a lot of conscientious pensioners dutifully do their tax returns in the early months of the year, before there is full prepopulation of the data.
 
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I am self assessed. I suspect that self assessed tax payers are treated differently when their COAP begins.

For my first claim year for COAP my tax bands and credits were not automatically adjusted to apply tax on my COAP income.

I contacted Revenue to alert them that I had started my COAP and to do the credits and bands adjustments.

I got a one line reply from Revenue stating that they would do the adjustments when they were notified by DSP.

No adjustments were applied for this first year.
My birthday is in January, so the first year of COAP was almost a full years payments.

Because of all this I decided to increase my preliminary tax to avoid a possible penalty for underpayment.

For the second year of COAP the credits and bands adjustments were applied.

This exact process occured again for my wife when her COAP began.

It's almost that Revenue and DSP are purposely trying to complicate matters for COAP claimers.
 
S class said:
For my first claim year for COAP my tax bands and credits were not automatically adjusted to apply tax on my COAP income.
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Seems odd since it seems to contradict what Revenue say happens in such a situation. Did you start receiving the OACP very late in the year maybe which didn't give DSP time to notify Revenue perhaps?
 
T McGibney said:
It would be far simpler if the user was presented with the correctly prepopulated information (as happens for example when a bank customer lodges a cheque at an ATM) and was simply asked to either to confirm or correct the information as presented.
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I thought this was what I had said in my post - the taxpayer has to take an action to confirm that the pre-populated figure is to be entered as "their" figure for income in the relevant panel of the return. Maybe I should have said "cause to be transcribed", by the ticking of a box or similar.

I'll defer to your knowledge / familiarity with what the form 11 completion actually entails in practical terms for a person in receipt of State pension - I'm simply pointing out that there's an important and necessary statutory distinction between Revenue telling a taxpayer "here's the figures we hold for your income from X employment / DSP Pension", and the taxpayer completing their self-assessment confirming "this is all of my income and tax due / paid". The onus is, and has to be, on the individual to ensure their declaration is complete and correct.


T McGibney said:
Another major problem stems from the annual delays on Revenue's part in having full income data prepopulated onto tax returns. I don't know for certain but if I complete a Form 11 2025 tax return in January or February 2026, the earlier I do so the more likely it will lack prepopulated income data.

And I would imagine that a lot of conscientious pensioners dutifully do their tax returns in the early months of the year, before there is full prepopulation of the data.
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I think calling it "annual delays" is a bit overly critical, or demonstrating unrealistic expectations of the timelines within which information can reasonably be pre-populated. The pension data can only be pre-populated after end-of-year data has been sent from DSP across to Revenue, validated, matched etc... and likewise with any other information for pre-population (employers have until 14th January to confirm / correct their December payroll submissions, which form the basis of individual employees' pay and tax for the year), so even in a technological utopia, mid- to late-January would be the absolute earliest feasible timeframe for availability of such data.
 
ClubMan said:
Did you start receiving the OACP very late in the year maybe which didn't give DSP time to notify Revenue perhaps?
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No I started in January. My wife started in March.
There was plenty of time for Revenue to adjust credits and tax band.
 
torblednam said:
I think calling it "annual delays" is a bit overly critical, or demonstrating unrealistic expectations of the timelines within which information can reasonably be pre-populated. The pension data can only be pre-populated after end-of-year data has been sent from DSP across to Revenue, validated, matched etc... and likewise with any other information for pre-population (employers have until 14th January to confirm / correct their December payroll submissions, which form the basis of individual employees' pay and tax for the year), so even in a technological utopia, mid- to late-January would be the absolute earliest feasible timeframe for availability of such data
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Then Revenue should bar taxpayers from completing such returns until the information has been imported.

It should be easy to see how the current practice of letting users plough on with incomplete data could be a significant contributor to the problem exposed earlier this week.
 
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ClubMan said:
Then the problem seems to have been DSP being tardy in reporting your OACP payments to Revenue?
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Maybe. But when this process was repeated twice, I tend to suspect that this is a procedure for self assessed taxpayers.

All my other experience for myself and other family members is that DSP and Revenue are very accurate and efficient at transferring data between each other.
 
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