Boutique owner hit for €3.18m over tax default

Revenue settlements with tax defaulters amount to €11.08m

The total value of settlements either paid or owed to Revenue for the three-month period to the end of June amounted to over €11.8 million.
The total value of settlements either paid or owed to Revenue for the three-month period to the end of June amounted to over €11.8 million.

A Westmeath boutique owner has been hit with a tax bill of almost €3.2 million. Nora Filtness, who ran the Clara Ellen fashion shop in Mullingar, was caught in a Revenue audit.

She underdeclared her liability to income tax and VAT by €1.06 million and was hit with similar sums in both interest and penalties. None of the settlement agreed with the Revenue was paid by the end of June.

Ms Filtness, of Millcastle, Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, accounted for more than a quarter of the €11.08 million raised by Revenue in settlements with 58 taxpayers, according to the latest Tax defaulters List.

Other names featuring on the list, published Tuesday, included Executive Hire Chauffeur Drive, based in Mungret, Co Limerick. The chauffeur service was found to have underdeclared PAYE, PRSI and USC following a Revenue audit and paid €68,692 in a settlement.

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Sports World Netting Limited, which claims to be the only specialist supplier of high netting for sports in Ireland, paid €121,543, having also underdeclared PAYE, PRSI and USC. The company, based in Scariff, Co Clare, owed an initial amount of €79,761 and paid interest and penalties of €41,782.

Two directors of a company behind the Cardiff Inn in Finglas made settlements of €280,000 each. They are Anthony Moran of Hollybrook Park, Clontarf, Dublin 3, and John Moran of Kinsealy, Dublin 17, each of whom was found to have underdeclared on capital acquisitions tax.

Twenty-seven cases involved amounts exceeding €100,000.

All bar one of the settlements in the latest list come as a result of Revenue audits with only one concluded as a result of Revenue's series of special investigations. That was the case of haulier Séamus Fitzgerald, from Halltown, Navan, Co Meath, who paid a settlement of €45,110.

Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in business