Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will not be able to declare that his taxes are fully up to date when a Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) deadline for successfully-elected TDs and Senators expires.
Under the law, TDs and Senators are required to produce a tax-clearance certificate within nine months of a general election, or else to acknowledge that a tax issue exists and that discussions with the Revenue are ongoing, as they are in Mr Ahern's case.
Newly-elected Oireachtas members must send the ethics body a copy of a Revenue tax-clearance certificate, or a Revenue statement of application for a tax clearance certificate to comply with the regulations that have been in force since before the 2002 general election.
It is now clear that Mr Ahern will have to submit a statement of application to the commission, given that Revenue will not make a determination on his case before the Sipo deadline.
Mr Ahern yesterday said that a tax certificate and a statement of application for one had "equal stature" under Section 21 of the ethics legislation.
In an interview on the RTÉ radio programme This Week, Mr Ahern said that in 2002 he had declared "that I am to the best of my knowledge and belief in compliance with my tax obligations, and that is my position, and it is advice that I had".
He strongly criticised the leaking of his confidential correspondence with the Revenue: "There has been a long-standing practice that people's revenue business are dealings between the Revenue and the individual.
"I think it is a new low in Irish life, not Irish politics, that Revenue letters are to be leaked. If this is the road that we go down that anybody's Revenue letters can be leaked from whatever source, but may I quickly add that I do not believe that any of these leaks of letters came from the Revenue. They did not come from Revenue, in my view.
"They came from the tribunal circulating them to people and people giving them on to newspapers. That is where they come from. I do think that it is a very serious issue if the correspondence of ordinary men and women in this country can find itself into Sunday newspapers, or any other newspapers," he said.
He said he had made a lodgement with the Revenue, which has the effect of putting a stop on the accumulation of interest on any back taxes the Revenue may or may not eventually decide are due in Mr Ahern's case. "That is what I was advised I should do. I paid the money on account, as is the normal practice.
"I hope that they still might owe me money. My advisers certainly think so. Revenue may have a different view to that. That is their prerogative.
"All I want, and Revenue would agree with this, is to be treated no different to any other taxpayer. In this case I am just an ordinary taxpayer."
Mr Ahern said he believed the Revenue authorities would not make a final decision on his case until, at least, after Mahon had finished evidence about his affairs.
"They will probably not make their conclusion until all of these things are completed, but I have no reason to believe that they will disagree.
"I have no disagreement with Revenue whatsoever. I have given comprehensive data, all the information. And just for completeness, my position about 2002, because I have seen that in the papers in the last few days, is that my tax affairs were in order as well," he said.
He said documentation about his affairs lodged with the Mahon tribunal still managed to leak into the public arena, even though his lawyers had warned that their contents could damage him politically.
"They are ignored. The letters are sent out to people who have no interest in getting the letters. The tribunal probably say that they have to do that because of legal judgements - I understand that. But the fact is that I do not get the same confidentiality, the same fair hearing and the same circumstances in a tribunal as anyone else. So it is not an equal playing pitch. Nobody else in the country would have their Revenue records flouted.
"There is nobody else who would have bank statements sent to hundreds of people. I think it highly unfair, I think it is unjust. I don't know what law it is governed by," he told the programme.
