By midnight on 15 November, the tax deadline for electronic filers, a total of 279,020 income tax returns were filed, up 14 percent on last year when 244,114 returns were processed online.
A record number of returns were successfully filed on the last day when 37,000 people logged on to send in their returns online. The ROS helpdesk was busy too, clocking up over 1,750 calls from members of the public on Thursday regarding filing tax returns and making tax payments via the website.
The number of customers choosing to pay their tax online was also up 14 percent to 99,000 payments. This compares to 86,000 payments made a year ago. The total payment of tax via the web for this year is estimated to be over EUR2.28 billion, up from EUR2.2 billion last year and EUR1.4 billion in 2005.
Early indications suggest that over 74 percent of timely filers used the electronic route to file tax returns this year, which compares favourably with the 70 percent recorded last year.
The Revenue Commissioners' long-term aim is to have all tax returns filed online.
ROS is the state's flagship e-government service and has won a number of awards since going live in September 2000. In July 2003 Revenue received an eGovernment label from the European Commission for the service while in November 2005 it won the 'Impact' award at the eEurope Awards for eGovernment.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Charlie Taylor
Quelle/Source: ElectricNews, 16.11.2007
