Revenue - Company Audit Selection Procedure

[The Excession]

Just wondering about a few of the issues surrounding the procedure the Revenue use when selecting a Company for an audit, and what people's experience of this are.

Now, admittedly my Company is registered in Ireland but I guess the procedures are pretty similar in the UK.

This morning I received a letter from our Accountants indicating that the Revenue Commission in Ireland are upping their audits on Ltd Companys. The reasoning given was a down turn in the economy has caused a dramtic down turn in building industry, and that the Revenue are now trying to recoup their income (tax) by performing more audits, hoping to catch out a few fraudsters.

Additionally my Accountants are offering my an Audit Insurance Policy. It costs Euro20/month, but means if I get called for an audit they will waiver any associated accountant fees.

Now my accountant keeps all my books for me, I just send in receipts every month for all sales and purchases. Being a one mand band software company these are very few in number, and I'm pretty sure everything is squeaky clean.

I guess my annual turn-over is in the region of 100K-300K Euro, so it's not huge.

So, what are the Revenue's procedures for selecting a Company for audit? Is it purely random? Are there some flags on certain Companies that might trigger an audit. For example, 95% of my Company income comes from the UK in Sterling - and it's all zero rated for VAT - would this flag up?

Likewise where possible, I always try to buy from the UK, again because it means there is no VAT liabillity.

Just wondered what some of our esteemed business people think about this.

cheers
Ex

[Eric Mc]

The Irish tax system is now quite different from that in the UK and it would be wrong to trry and draw too many prallels between them.