A maintenance man who operated 20 bank accounts has lost his €235,331 tax battle over unexplained lodgements to his various bank accounts of €441,552.
This follows the Tax Appeals Commission (TAC) upholding a €235,331 assessment issued to the maintenance worker for the years 2011 to 2019 by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).
Records produced by CAB show that the man – living in a council house – made lodgements of €441,552 during that period over and above lodgements from his maintenance worker salary of €32,177 to €37,003.
In her findings in the anonymised ruling, Appeal Commissioner Leonora B Doyle found that the €235,331 tax bill stands as the man provided no documentary evidence to show the source of the €441,552 lodged to the accounts.
CAB issued its assessment on July 26, 2023 and the man appealed the assessment to the TAC where he contended that the amounts set out in the assessment are excessive and do not reflect his actual income details.
At hearing, the man did try to explain a portion of the €441,552 income when claiming that he received annual tips of €5,000 a year from residents where he worked which would have amounted to €45,000 during the 2011-19 period.
He also claimed that in the late 1990s his mother died and left him €50,000 in cash while he claimed that he also had settlements from three road traffic accident accidents totalling €26,000.
He also claimed that he received a settlement from his ex-spouse in the amount of €10,000 from the sale of their family home.
At hearing, a barrister for CAB dismissed the maintenance worker’s explanations for the unexplained income as “not credible”.
In evidence, the maintenance worker said from 2009-2011 instead of leaving his money in his bank accounts he withdrew his wages in cash from his Permanent TSB bank account and he kept the cash at home.
The worker stated that at “…one stage I would have had around €90,000 in the house and I said ‘I’ll keep that as back-up money in case the banks go bust’….”.
The worker stated he used to have a lot of cash at home because he used to work with cash all the time as he did not use bank cards.
“That’s why I was a cash person. I’m nearly 70-years of age now and I’m from the old stock, cash was the way you worked. You didn’t use cards.”
The worker stated with the introduction of the €100,000 State banks guarantee he wanted to spread his money to ensure security for his savings.
The man said that his “big mistake was, well in hindsight now, that I didn’t transfer the money that I was taking out, out of my wages money, if I’d have transferred that I wouldn’t have this problem today”.
“Unfortunately, I done it the old way, I took the money out, went over to these banks and put it in, like at a thousand at a time. But most of the transactions that I’d have been taking out of the bank would have been several hundred, you know and then I’d add the other few hundred over two weeks,” he said.
The man stated that he lived in a council house throughout this period and he had a second-hand car in a period which he disposed of some years ago.
The man also pointed out that there was significant public disquiet about the safety of bank deposits in the period in question and this led him to withdraw money from some banks and re-lodge the money sometime later to a different bank.
CAB pointed out that in one year alone in 2013, the man had unexplained income of €116,000.
CAB treated the unexplained lodgements as miscellaneous income from an unknown source.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
