Where theres money there's dirt.

To come up with a new tax is probably the ultimate dream of any government .I am not even sure that the Deposit Interest Retention Tax introduced by the Irish Government was original,but the way it was used certainly was .
The idea of D.I.R.T. is to skim directly off a person's deposit account, tax on the interest on that account ,at source.It is the appropriate bank's,or other financial institution's legal responsibility to do so .
In the Autumn of 1999 an inquiry was set up by the Oireachtas to enquire into the operation of the tax scheme since its inception.This was named The DIRT Inquiry.The body responsible for carrying out the inquiry was the Public Accounts Committee(P.A.C.)The committee's chairman at that time was the late Jim Mitchell of Fine Gael.Those asking the questions were,Pat Rabbitte (Labour),Denis Foley (Fianna Fail),Sean Ardagh(FF),Bernard Durcan (FG) and ????.
The inquiry was televised live on TG4.I had just recently taken early retirement and was able to sit in on most of the proceedings.
What came out ,in the course of the inquiry, was that many.many bank branches were involved in systematic collusion, with their better- off customers ,to avoid the customers liability for DIRT by allowing the chosen people to use an address ,on their bank account ,which put them in the catagory of non-resident ,thereby exempting them from liability for DIRT
Every Bank in the country was apparently involved.It also turned out that even those in high ranking positions in business and government, knew what was going on.Senior Civil Servants such as, the head of the Revenue Commissioners,the Governor of the Central Bank ,were called. as were the chairmen of both AIB and Bank of Ireland,current and former Ministers for Finance(in fact we at one stage had the brothers Quinn,Ruari,in his capacity as former Minister for Finance,and Lochlann in his capacity as Chairman of B.of I. appearing on seperate days).

These people all sat around a large table being crossed examined by the above inquisitors,and directed by the PAC chairman.NO LAWYERS.
It was the best television I have ever seen.I who had been paying a total of 55% tax on my income..if I exceeded my agreed overdraft in the bank,I paid £3.50(referral charge on EACH TRANSACTION ....
Some of the comments made were worth recording ,for example the Governor of the Central Bank(I think it was Maurice o'Connell)said that although they were aware(anecdotally?)that this was going on if he kicked up a fuss this might cause international(legitimate non-residents ?)clients to lose confidence in Irish banking,I think the expression used was ''don't rock the boat''.Also one of the inquisitors ,had himself,a non-resident account.One of the former Ministers for Finance, AlanDukes ,used a similar argument to the Central Bank man, when asked why he did not include changes in his budget when he became aware of the scam.However the same Mr. Dukes had no problem, in the same budget, eliminating the PAYE tax allowance for children.

What was the outcome of this report?Who was punished?What action was taken by successive Governments to prevent this happening again?Apart from more Fianna Fail tax amnesties.Nothing..This was an INQUIRY(or was it an ENQUIRY!!!!,.what's the difference?) stupid ,nothing was ever intended to happen.

I'm...really,really sorry I didn't keep a video tape of those proceedings....