Revenue seizing Company accounts?

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Apologies if this is in the wrong place and for the length of it

Basically my father runs a small business in Dublin and at the moment he is away due to a sick member of the family,altho he is now flying home .Yesterday he was informed by the bank that the revenue have seized his company accounts and took all the money in them(not a lot)and all future monies until the figure he owes them is paid.

He owes about 80k including penalties and fines etc which he was paying back at 2k a month,he then missed a month simply down to not having it to spare.Now he can't pay wages,suppliers or indeed himself.


I suppose what i'm asking is there anything he can do?,he's tried talking to them today and they are not backing down,but obviously he can't continue to earn if he can't pay suppliers and wages and has no access to the company accounts & therefore he can't pay the Revenue the sum owed .He's completely devastated and has health issues himself which are not gonna be helped by this kinda thing

That's pretty much all i know except to say that the amount that is owed is not down to tax evasion or fraud of any description just simply the fact that he did not have the money in the current economic climate to pay the full amount owed which was roughly around a quarter of the 80,000 the rest being penalties and fines, interest etc.

Thanks a lot

smeharg

He needs an accountant/tax advisor to deal with Revenue on his behalf.

It appears you might not be getting the whole story. This kind of action is usually taken by Revenue when the tax payer is not engaging satisfactorily with them.

If it was merely an inability to pay scenario then penalties shouldn't arise only interest. Imposition of penalties would suggest that either returns were filed late and/or incorrect returns were filed.

Shane732

The Revenue can place such an order over a bank account(s).

Very unusual circumstances you've outlined, he's managed to clock up interest and penalties of €60k? Either this is a long standing debt that the Revenue have been trying to collect of along time and the entity as now essentially reached the end of the road or we don't have the full details.

In any event, there's very little you can do. The only option is to engage with the Revenue and try to reconcile the issue.

As smeharg said you need professional advice on this one.

Bobby1984

Call Mick Wallace, he might be able to help.

On a serious note, it is a lesson to other people out there - you need to contact the Revenue if you owe them money in order to sort out a payment plan. Most of the time, they are reasonable enough and you can come to some agreement. However you need to maintain contact especially if you are going to miss a scheduled payment.

Also agree with previous posters about seeking professional advice.

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Cheers for the replies.And apologies for the vagueness i'm being as specific as i can but the accountant normally deals with all of this kinda thing and he's away on his hols i'll be talking with someone in his firm later on .

Aye the 80k is being disputed and hopefully the full figure will be substantially less.It may just be semantics but the accounts are not seized as such, there is an "attachment order" on them.There was/is a standing order in place from our bank to the revenue but and i'm not sure i understand this but for the last 2 months they have not collected the standing order and the money was there to cover the full amount.

I talked to the bank manager last night who was really very helpful to be fair and he said this week the revenue have done the same to 7 other small firms accounts in his branch alone.(obviously i have no idea of their situation)

We have been in contact all along with the revenue.although there has been some family stuff going on so very possibly we have taken our eyes off the ball and should be keeping a closer eye on the accoutant There was no notification either that they were going to do this until this morning we got a letter from them,about a week after the event

I understand now that there's not a thing anyone can do other than deal directly with these Revenue people but the unhelpfulness of them in these times is pretty weird i think.There is no issue of defaulting or anything like that adn we will pay what we owe, but they are killing small firms if this is how they approach situations like ours.A bird in the hand anol that

Anyways sound of ye for replying

Ally Dick

Sorry but I don't have any advice for you. I would just like to wish your father well, and I hope he comes to an amicable settlement