Revenue Information Powers: Lessons From Lifeplus V HMRC

The Irish Revenue Commissioners (“Revenue“) are increasingly exercising their statutory powers to require taxpayers to produce documents and information, both in connection with domestic tax enquiries and in response to exchange of information (“EOI”) requests from foreign tax administrations.

While focused on HMRC’s powers to request documents from a UK subsidiary relating to its US parent company in the course of a transfer pricing (“TP”) enquiry, the recent UK First-Tier Tribunal (“FTT”) decision in Lifeplus Europe Ltd v Commissioners for HMRC¹ nonetheless provides useful guidance when considering the scope and limits of Revenue’s powers in this area.

In particular, the FTT’s consideration and analysis of the concepts of ‘reasonably required’ and ‘possession or power’ is instructive in terms of how to interpret the analogous Irish statutory provisions.