{"id":582647,"date":"2026-08-04T06:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/582647\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T06:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:24:15","slug":"retailer-must-repay-e8-87m-in-covid-wage-supports-after-losing-revenue-challenge-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/582647\/","title":{"rendered":"Retailer must repay \u20ac8.87m in Covid wage supports after losing Revenue challenge \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A major retailer must repay \u20ac8.87 million to the Revenue Commissioners<\/a> after wrongly claiming wage subsidy payments for its staff during the Covid-19 pandemic<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Tax Appeals Commission<\/a> has found that Revenue was correct in raising the \u20ac8.87 million Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme assessment against the unnamed retailer in 2024 after hearing evidence and submissions over eight days.<\/p>\n

The retailer received the \u20ac8.872 million in special Covid wage subsidy payments across 10 months from September 2020 to June 2021 \u2013 an average \u20ac887,281 per month.<\/p>\n

Revenue issued its assessment after finding that the retailer had failed to demonstrate to its satisfaction that its business had experienced or was expected to experience a 30 per cent reduction in turnover during the relevant periods.<\/p>\n

The retailer carries on a wide variety of business in the State. One part of its business was deemed non-essential and so was required to close during various Covid-19 lockdown periods in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n

Appealing the Revenue assessment to the Tax Appeals Commission, the retailer submitted that this business division had suffered a fall in revenues of 30 per cent from September to December 2020 and reduced revenues of 45 per cent from January to June 2021, and accordingly received Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme support for those two periods.<\/p>\n

The Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme and its predecessor \u2013 the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme \u2013 ran from late March 2020 to the end of May 2022. They were designed to help viable businesses and maintain the relationship between employers and their employees.<\/p>\n

The scheme supported 51,900 businesses which, between them, employed almost 744,000 employees at a cost of \u20ac10.66 billion.<\/p>\n

A witness for the retailer told the hearing that the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and presented a grim economic scenario, both for the economy at large and the retailer in particular.<\/p>\n

The retailer argued that had it not been eligible to avail of the EWSS scheme to support employment, there would have been a strong possibility that it would have had to make staff redundant. <\/p>\n

The retailer stated that employees in that division of its business would not only have lost their connection with the retailer, but would also have had to claim the Pandemic Unemployment Payment from the Government if the business was not entitled to claim under the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme.<\/p>\n

He said that it was clear to him and his management team that the appellant had divisions and it decided to apply for EWSS in respect of a division, which was classified as non-essential and therefore closed during lockdowns.<\/p>\n

Revenue did not accept that certain business divisions operated by the retailer constituted separate business divisions for the purpose of claiming under the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Simon Noone said he was satisfied that the retailer had not demonstrated that it had individual business divisions, with clearly distinct management structures, as required by the guidelines.<\/p>\n

A note at the end of the 55-page ruling states that the Tax Appeals Commission has been requested to state and sign a case on the ruling for the opinion of the High Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A major retailer must repay \u20ac8.87 million to the Revenue Commissioners after wrongly claiming wage subsidy payments for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,160,61,60,11522,173708],"class_list":["post-582647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-covid-19","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-revenue-commissioners","tag-tax-appeals-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}