IR denies huge hold-ups for tax rebates

The Inland Revenue has dismissed reports that subcontractors will face excessive delays in receiving tax rebates paid under the Construction Industry Scheme because of problems with its computer software.

Newspaper reports have suggested that between 500,000 and 900,000 subcontractors face disastrous cashflow difficulties because IR workers have to put individual details on to the computer system before a tax calculation can be reached. It had also been claimed that the software that deals specifically with self assessment, called Local Data Capture, would not be up and running until the middle of June.

But an IR spokesman said that the figures being banded about were wide of the mark. "Every year we update the system to accommodate changes in the tax guide. Last year we had to change the whole software in anticipation of the change to 2000. This has meant testing is taking that little bit longer, but we are approaching the end of the testing period and hope to be on-line fully any day now."

The spokesman said that the anticipated backlog is about 430,000 but added that was a country-wide figure and that only a very small percentage of those affected would be subcontractors.

"The figure of 900,000 is in relation to the amount of registration cards we issued last year and there is no indication that that will be anything like the number of people affected by this. Only half of the cards are in active use anyway as many people would have registered in anticipation of joining the scheme."