Revenue Sheriff - goods seizure

I got a telephone call from a baliff yesterday demanding money for PAYE that was due from our company - usually we offset our Vat refund against PAYE due - so on balance the Revenue actually owed us. The upshot of it all is the baliff was trying to extract €1700 and then dropped to €800 for his fees. Do we have to pay this seeing as technically we didn`t owe a debt? I rang revenue and explained situation - they called off the baliff but said the fee issue needed to be sorted out amongst ourselves and they were having nothing to do with it.

Had you contacted Revenue to ask them to offset your refund against your liability? If not you technically did owe a debt as they are not obliged to offset one tax against another.

would the fact they called off Sheriff/baliff not mean they accepted my argument? The sheriff was looking for €1700 but dropped it to €800 - is this another indication that these bills needn`t necessarily be paid - what are my options? what can they do?

Don't you have an accountant/tax advisor who can assist with this?

I would think that by calling off the sheriff they have accepted that you have now paid your outstanding liabilty (by offsetting a tax refund) but that does not mean you never had an oustanding liabilty.

They engaged the services of the sheriff to extract payment of this liabilty and now the sheriff needs to be paid - presumably by you.

As for what you can now do, as Clubman says, I think you need to go to the professionals before it escalates further.

Good to get other points of view Clubman. - our auditors suggested that technically we didn`t owe a debt because Vat refund amt exceeds PAYE due. Looking for as much views as possible before I proceed.
What can the sheriff do if I refuse to pay the debt?

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thanks - had googled that a bit earlier as well - anyone ever have the pleasnat experience of dealing with these sheriffs?

You may not "technically" have owed it but the course of events would suggest that you did not submit a return stating this ... which you are obliged to do.
I would be surprised if there were not a number of pieces of correspondence relating to this before it was passed to sheriff.

Well revenue have now washed their hands of this - so going back to my question what can baliff do if we refuse to pay?

so going back to my question what can baliff do if we refuse to pay?

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Well they are baliffs, so what do you think they're going to do?

It's an unfortunate situation. We were in a similar predicament. It seems they can ask for any abitrary amount of money (with menaces), and business owners have to cough up. We regarded it as yet another extra tax.

The difficulty is that the various forms of tax are seperate and are dealth with by different departments. Therefore the PAYE debt and Vat are legally different. I have had several client's who have to endure these difficulties in offsetting overpayments on one tax with liabilities on another.

The collector general has responsibility for collecting all the cash be it PAYE, vat or income tax. Normally the debt recovery section will contact you with a final demand before sending in the sherrif. At this stage a call to the individual dealing with the case in debt recovery would sort it.

I had a case this year where a cheque was paid to the sherrif and it arrived on the same day as he was dispatched to the client's premises to seize property. The client still had to pay the sherrif's call out fee even though he never reached his premisies or seized property.

You will find that at some stage you will have received the final demand from the collector general at which time you should have requested the offset.

Having said that if there is a precident for the offset and you are always in a vat refund situation and you always use the vat refund that is due to discharge your PAYE liability you should contact your local tax office and request that the note be put on your file that you are in a vat refund situation and you use it to discharge your PAYE liabilites.

This will not mean that the offset will occur automatically but it will alert someone in the collector general's office to the fact.

leghorn said:

Well they are baliffs, so what do you think they're going to do?

It's an unfortunate situation. We were in a similar predicament. It seems they can ask for any abitrary amount of money (with menaces), and business owners have to cough up. We regarded it as yet another extra tax.

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The PAYE amount has been paid - so there is no outstanding debt owed to revenue.
Our argument is that techically there was no debt owed as vat refunds exceeded PAYE amounts due.
This baliff guy is ringing me back firday to see if he can collect his fee - so I`m trying to get my arguments in place for refusal to pay.
I`m also trying to find out what powers he has to chase this fee, in the event that we refuse payment
Our auditors suggested we would be within our rights to call the guards if they attempted to remove any property - looking for €800 when tehy only had to make a few phone calls seems extortionate. I am willing to go to any ends in order to counter this persons - there was an air of menace in all his calls that went beyond normal business activity.

Maybe harsh words but it seems to me that someone within your company has already been messing around with this.

In my experience Revenue is quite patient with errant taxpayers up to a point.

Once the baliff is on your tail, Id be inclined to pay up and close the matter. Above all learn the lesson from it.

The individual in the collector general's office woudl have had access to your "net" tax position. As far as I am aware they arwe entitled to send the sherrif in to collect the PAYE debt even if you were in a refund situation.

However, the individual in the collector general's office should have had the ability to realise the the most effective means of collecting their debt was to offset your vat suplus. Your argument should be that a "reasonable" individual would not have referred the debt to the sheriff for recovery when no such action was required.

You need to make the argument that the collector general was in a position to seize your assets (the vat refund) without recourse to the sherrif.

Surely it is not in the interest of the state to impoverish a normally compliant tax payer given that said taxpayer had complied with his legal obligation to file the appropriate returns and had, as a business, arrived at a position where his net tax liabilties were less than zero.



As an argument

roadrunner said:

Our auditors suggested we would be within our rights to call the guards if they attempted to remove any property .

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I think they were telling you what you wanted to hear.

roadrunner said:

- looking for €800 when tehy only had to make a few phone calls seems extortionate.

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Indeed but that's how sheriffs make their money.

roadrunner said:

I am willing to go to any ends in order to counter this persons

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Unfortunately the law is on their side. You won't win.

Command - thank you - reason I posted was to get arguments to use in this scenario. you hit nail on the head there - any more arguments would be appreciated.

A few points:

- Revenue are correct: baliff's charges are nothing to do with them so you're almost certainly going to have to pay

- They wouldn't have been called in unless (a) the debt existed and (b) revenue hadn't made repeated attempts to recover it

- Having said that, mistakes are made so check with Revenue again. If they called in the sherrif prematurely (i.e. without warning you) you might have some hope of getting them to cover the costs.

- Just because you've offset before (or even all the time), you still have to inform Revenue you're doing this. If you don't inform them, and you ignore the requests for the unpaid tax, you really have very little to stand on.

- I'd question the advice you're getting from your auditors about calling in the guards in this situation, especially if there were requests for the unpaid tax leading up to the sherrif's apointment.

I speak as someone who's had to deal with a similar situation: not a pleasant situation to be in: you have my sympathies.

This discussion brings into focus the whole issue of Revenue powers and how the Revenue and their agents, bailiffs, sheriffs etc operate in a legal framework where they can pretty much do what they want (including powers of arrest, seizure of possessions etc) and without the normal controls to which Gardai and other state officials are subject.

Interestingly, our supposedly pro-business FF/PD government voted to extend these powers yet again in the recent Finance Act. The fact that they did so a few weeks BEFORE a general election shows how many people really care about this issue.

Like the previous poster, the OP has my sympathies but having dealt with many such cases over the years, I've learned at it is impossible to win when dealing with these guys.

command said:

However, the individual in the collector general's office should have had the ability to realise the the most effective means of collecting their debt was to offset your vat suplus. Your argument should be that a "reasonable" individual would not have referred the debt to the sheriff for recovery when no such action was required.

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That's a nonsense. If I don't pay my mortage and the bank make repeated requests for it (which I ignore), does the bank have rights to help themselves to any savings I might have in a different account with them? Don't think so: unless they have my explicit approval for taking it, which is exactly what the Revenue need.