Revenue has called on more than half a million PAYE workers to claim refunds they are due and stressed that it actively wants to ensure money owed to people for tax reliefs including rent, mortgages and health expense are paid to those entitled to it.
While the number of PAYE workers making claims for 2024 since the start of the year has jumped by 20 per cent when compared with the same period last year, around 530,000 people fail to lodge a claim annually.
It is likely that close to €400m in tax rebates went unclaimed by PAYE workers over the course of 2023 with the cumulative total over the last four years – the time period over which tax rebates can still be sought close to €1.2 billion.
Launching an awareness campaign, Revenue officials encouraged close to a million workers to log on to its MyAccount service and update their tax records. It said refunds, when owed, would be processed in fewer than five day in most cases.
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Revenue’s national PAYE manager Aisling Ní Mhaoileoin said that some people “are afraid to engage with” Revenue, adding that the purpose of the campaign was to allay those fears and to highlight how straightforward the process of claiming refunds is.
“We’ve done everything we can within our online systems to assist people to file their returns, and if anyone is unsure, there’s lots of really useful information on our website,” she said.
She said rebates that were frequently overlooked by taxpayers include rebates on prescriptions and children’s GP visits
She noted that, over recent years, Revenue had written to almost 700,000 people to alert them that they might be due a rebate – or to the possibility that they had underpaid their taxes.
She said that tax credits covering rent and mortgage interest relief, which she described as “sizeable” had made more people aware of the MyAccount system and “helped people to come in. I think compared to this time last year, we’ve seen an increase of about 50% per cent in people coming in and claiming so the message is getting out there.”
She stressed that there was “nothing to be afraid of” and encouraged people who are “doing a financial health check at this time of year [to] include a review of your taxes as part of that. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s free.”
As of January 29th, 550,000 PAYE workers had filed tax returns for 2024 with 444,000 of those people overpaying their tax for the year and qualifying of a refund averaging around €500 as a result.
A further 40,500 of the returns were balanced while just under 66,000 of those who filed a tax return had underpaid their tax with the total underpayment coming in at just under €8.2 million – an average of just over €124.
Revenue stressed that it would work with those who had underpaid their tax with repayment plans based around altering tax credits over up to four years going forward with no interest attached to the outstanding debt.
Health expenses accounted for the most claims for refunds so far this year with 131,000 claims already lodged. The rent tax credit was the second most commonly returned claim with 112,000 people seeking rebates this year already followed by claims for the remote working relief, flat rate expenses and tuition fees.
In the first month of the year 2,586 people lodged a claim for the mortgage interest tax credit, which can be worth as much as €1,250 a year. Despite the size of the rebate fewer than 15 per cent of those who could have benefited from it for the 2023 tax year had lodged a claim by the end of October last year.
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