Tag Archives: revenue commissioners

Patriyachtism

Posted on Monday 25 July 2016 | 1 comment

It will be recalled that, for many years, the governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Ireland subsidised the owners of private pleasure craft by allowing them to use the cheap diesel permitted for off-road use (not that farmers should get subsidies either). The EU (or whatever it was called at the time) told them to stop; they asked for, and received, several derogations to allow them time to comply; during that time they stuck their thumbs in their collective bums and did nothing. Eventually the EU got fed up and told them to get on with it.

The Irish government’s pretence at compliance was particularly ludicrous and contemptible. It said that yacht-owners (using “yacht” as shorthand for “private pleasure craft”) could continue to buy marked gas-oil (cheap or green diesel) at the rebated (cheap) price but that, once a year, they should tell the Revenue Commissioners how much they had bought, work out the amount of the underpayment and pay that sum to the Revenue.

I can’t imagine how the Revenue Commissioners thought that was going to work, but they seem to have been happy with a scheme that facilitated — nay, encouraged — tax evasion by those sufficiently well off to own yachts. Someone in the Irish Times, perhaps after having had his or her ear bent over a few pink gins at the bar of the George, referred to this as an “honour system”; there was no evidence that she or he had actually checked the compliance rate to assess the effectiveness of the scheme and the extent of honour amongst yacht-owners.

The figures for the year 2015, as of 15 April 2016, were kindly supplied by the Revenue Commissioners some months ago; here they are, with those for previous years.

For the record:

Year Payers Litres Amount
2010 for 2009 38 n/a n/a
2011 for 2010 41 n/a n/a
2012 for 2011 22 141,503.29 €53,398.58
2013 for 2012 23 301,674 €113,841.45
2014 for 2013 20 279,842.4 €105,561.74
2015 for 2014 26 289,151 €108,934.80
2016 for 2015 18 371,666 €140,021.51

I suspect that the increase in the number of litres paid for might represent the improved business for the hire fleets in 2015, but I would welcome information on the subject.

In 2015 the Irish Sports Council gave the Irish Sailing Association €1,121,900.

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Modern matters, Politics, Shannon, Water sports activities, waterways

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Big it up for the Kingstown Blazers

Posted on Wednesday 15 April 2015 | Leave a comment

Hats off to the Irish Sailing Association for its successful campaign to persuade owners of diesel-powered pleasure craft to pay the Mineral Oil Tax. The ISA reckoned that, if more folk paid up, the nasty foreigners might allow boaters to continue to use patriotic green diesel:

It may already be too late to save the present diesel supply system in Ireland, but the very least we can do is to strengthen the country’s case by paying the tax. If we don’t do that, we won’t have a leg to stand on.

There have been other press releases since then, and the ISA has said that

The issue for leisure sailors is not the price of diesel but its availability.

Which suggests that it’s only a series of misfortunes that has prevented 99.75% of owners from paying the tax they should have paid. Perhaps the dog ate their chequebooks.

But the ISA put its shoulder to the wheel, its nose to the grindstone and its money where its mouth was, calling on other people to pay up. And, by golly, they did. It is no doubt as a result of the ISA’s call that the number of folk paying Mineral Oil Tax in 2015 (for 2014) was …

30%

… up on the previous year’s figure.

Admittedly that just meant it went from 20 to 26, so the non-compliance rate is still around 99.75%, but let us not mock honest effort. If the number continues to increase at six a year, there will be full compliance by the year 3677, which will be good; I look forward to recording the event.

For the record:

Year Payers Litres Amount
2010 for 2009 38 n/a n/a
2011 for 2010 41 n/a n/a
2012 for 2011 22 141,503.29 €53,398.58
2013 for 2012 23 301,674 €113,841.45
2014 for 2013 20 279,842.4 €105,561.74
2015 for 2014 26 289,151 €108,934.80

The income generated by the tax is about 10% of the amount the ISA gets from the state every year.

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Politics, Sea, Sources, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Green diesel

Posted on Thursday 27 November 2014 | 2 comments

Big it up for Messrs Breakingnews.ie for the information that the European Commission is taking Ireland to court over the ludicrous regulations for the use of green diesel in private pleasure craft. The topic has been covered here more than once, most recently here; I discussed the ludicrous regulations here.

Breakingnews.ie says that Ireland ignored the EU’s “letters” (presumably the Reasoned Opinion) on the subject. That is consoling, because my own requests for information about Ireland’s response to the Reasoned Opinion have likewise been ignored.

The EU’s press release is here; the EU notes that

While Irish law requires craft owners to pay to the Revenue the difference between the tax paid on marked gas oil and that due if the gas oil had been charged at the standard rate, the low number of tax returns indicate that the minimum level of taxation is not applied.

Indeed.

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Politics, Sea, Shannon, Tourism, Uncategorized, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Green diesel: reasoned opinion [updated]

Posted on Monday 12 May 2014 | 3 comments

Some news on one of our favourite topics.

The European Commission has formally requested Ireland to amend its legislation to ensure that private pleasure boats can no longer buy lower taxed fuel intended for fishing boats. Under EU rules on fiscal marking for fuels, fuel that can benefit from a reduced tax rate has to be marked by coloured dye. Fishing vessels for example are allowed to benefit from fuel subject to a lower tax rate but private boats must use fuel subject to a standard rate. Currently, Ireland breaches EU law by allowing the use of marked fuel for the purposes of propelling private pleasure craft. As a consequence, private leisure boats can not only use fuel intended for fishing vessels, subject to a lower taxation, but also risk heavy penalties if they travel to another Member State and the ship is checked by the local authorities. The Commission’s request takes the form of a reasoned opinion. In the absence of a satisfactory response within two months, the Commission may refer Ireland to the EU’s Court of Justice.

European Commission press release dated 16 April 2014, about three quarters of the way down the page.

Update: I see that the Irish Examiner noticed the EC statement. And NESC believes (sensibly) that green diesel should be scrapped altogether. Which won’t happen, because if you didn’t have unnecessary or ridiculous regulations Irish politicians wouldn’t be able to pretend to be doing something useful by playing with them.

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Politics, Sea, Shannon, Sources, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Diesel

Posted on Tuesday 18 February 2014 | 2 comments

The Revenue Commissioners [whom god bless and preserve] and their UK counterparts intend to add a new marker to rebated diesel to make it more difficult for oiks, cads and rotters to pollute the countryside.

If they had any sense, they would abolish rebated diesel altogether and force everybody — including boat-owners — to pay the full rate.

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Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, waterways

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A call to patriotic action …

Posted on Thursday 2 May 2013 | 2 comments

… said Brian Lenihan of his 2009 Budget, which did not greatly impress Michael Hennigan of FinFacts, who had a highly entertaining, if sadly prescient, article here.

 […] political self-interest, incompetence, negligence and laziness […] litany of failure, smugness, hubris and neglect […] the incompetence of the toxic cocktail of former school teachers, small town solicitors, social workers and bookkeepers […]

How true those words are, even today. (The “toxic cocktail” was the membership of the government.)

Anyway, on 24 April I heard Josephine Feehily of the Revenue Commissioners saying on the wireless that the minimum rate of compliance for self-assessed taxes was 80%. I fear that she may not have taken account of the Mineral Oil Tax, which has been largely ignored by the citizenry.

Just to recap, this idiotic tax is the result of governmental cowardice and unwillingness to tell even a small, insignificant interest group to get stuffed. For historical reasons, owners of diesel-powered boats, in some countries, were allowed to use rebated (“red” or “green” low-tax) diesel, AKA marked gas oil. The EU said, many years ago, that this subsidy should no longer be given to owners of private pleasure craft. The governments concerned accepted that, but asked for time to introduce the change. When that period ran out, without their having done anything about it, they asked for a further deferral, and then yet another. The EU finally got fed up and told them to get on with it.

The Irish government, with that low cunning and contempt for the law that has so endeared us to other EU states, decided to reject the obvious method of implementing the new rule, which would have been to charge owners of private pleasure craft the full (non-rebated) price at the pump. Instead, it came up with a scheme that had no chance of working properly: it allowed owners of private pleasure craft to continue to buy diesel at the low price provided that they made returns, once a year, showing the amount of diesel they had bought and paying the difference between the rebated price and the full price. This difference is called the Mineral Oil Tax [PDF].

Such a scheme might have had a chance of working in Switzerland or Germany, places where citizens often obey the law even when nobody is looking, but it had no chance at all in Ireland. And so indeed it proved to be.

In 2010, 38 boat-owners paid the tax for 2009.

In 2011, 41 boat-owners paid the tax for 2010.

In 2012, 22 boat-owners paid the tax for 2011. The total amount received was €53,398.58 on 141,503.29 litres of diesel. That’s an average of 6432.1 litres per return, which is very high; I think that a lot of that is accounted for by the hire fleets.

I now have the latest figures.

In 2013, 23 boat-owners paid the tax for 2012. The total amount received was €113,841.45 on 301,674 litres of diesel.

It is gratifying to note that the number of returns has increased, even if it is still a tiny proportion of the total number of owners of diesel-powered private pleasure craft. But the increase in the amount received and in the number of litres returned is staggering: both figures have more than doubled. I am unable to explain the increase.

As I said last year, this ridiculous tax should be scrapped; those operating private pleasure craft should be required to use non-rebated diesel. Taxes that cannot be collected bring the whole system into disrepute and strengthen citizen contempt for the state and for society. In taxation, you’ve got to grab them by the balls; then their hearts and minds will follow. That’s why VAT and PAYE are so effective.

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Irish waterways general, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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The fuel on the hill …

Posted on Thursday 28 March 2013 | Leave a comment

… may be plentiful but, according to today’s file, it seems there are still only seven licensed traders in marked fuel on the Shannon.

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Posted in Ashore, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Politics, Shannon, Sources, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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The diesel monopoly

Posted on Wednesday 9 January 2013 | 1 comment

I wrote here about the Revenue Commissioners’ new Marked Fuel Trader’s Licence. In brief, anyone selling marked fuel oil [green diesel] has to pay €250 to get a Marked Fuel Trader’s Licence and must also make monthly returns to Revenue of all “oil movements”. I thought, but I wasn’t sure, that this applied to marinas and others selling fuel for private pleasure navigation; as far as I could see at the time, none of those selling fuel along the Irish inland waterways had registered.

I have two pieces of news about that.

First, the Revenue Commissioners have confirmed that the new scheme does apply to sales of marked fuel for private pleasure navigation: in other words, those selling green diesel for boats along the inland waterways should all be registered under the scheme.

Second, I am happy to say that there is now at least one registered seller: Ciaran Fallon of Rooskey Craft & Tackle at Rooskey Quay. (There may be others that I haven’t spotted; you can check the latest list of Licensed Marked Fuel Traders here.) For the moment, then, Rooskey Craft & Tackle seems to have a monopoly of the legal supply of marked fuel on the Irish inland waterways.

Finally, on a somewhat related matter, here is the form [PDF] for making mineral oil tax returns for 2012. The numbers of returns received so far have been 38 in 2009, 41 in 2010 and 22 in 2011.

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Politics, Shannon, Sources, Suir, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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