Vat Audit 2004 South Dublin County Council

24/06/2005

Archived item. This item is published here for historical reasons. The information below may be out of date.

VAT Audit 2004

South Dublin County Council

Press Release

South Dublin County Council has recently agreed a Value Added Tax (VAT) settlement with the Revenue Commissioners for €75,993. The settlement relates to an under-payment of VAT on imported goods and services by South Dublin County Council during the period January 2003 to June 2004. This under-payment arose from an accounting error that was highlighted during a Revenue audit in 2004.

Background
In most of the Council’s financial transactions VAT is charged by the supplier and absorbed into the cost of the service, as the Council cannot recoup VAT (except in the case of transactions relating to the municipal golf course). Sometimes however goods and/or services are sourced from other countries and the Council is obliged to calculate the VAT appropriate to these invoices and recoup this to the Collector General. It came to light during the audit that when accounting to the Collector General for VAT some such transactions had been overlooked in error. The underpayment relates to the period of time when South Dublin County Council was implementing an integrated financial management system to replace a suite of outdated financial systems. The implementation was complex and an oversight in the process lead to the omission of a small number of non-Irish transactions from the bi-monthly VAT calculation process.

Context
South Dublin County Council processed 65,000 invoices during the period January 2003 to June 2004 resulting in payments totalling €550M to suppliers and contractors. The VAT audit for this period highlighted 200 invoices (approximately 11 invoices per month) with a total value of €0.35M that had inadvertently been omitted from the VAT return.

The under-declaration of VAT while regrettable was not intentional, however the Revenue Commissioners are obliged to publish the VAT settlement, penalties and interest (€30,393). The settlement has been paid in full and following a review of our procedures steps have been taken to ensure that this error does not re-occur.

For further information please contact the Office of the Head of Finance 4149000 .