Tax defaulters earn right to be forgotten eventually

THE Revenue Commissioners deleted a 15-year archive of tax defaulters because keeping the names online indefinitely meant some people could not get on with their life afterwards.

In one case, a man claimed he had been rejected for a job because he had been late filing income tax returns – a decade earlier.

Revenue were also concerned they could face legal challenges because of the ‘right to be forgotten’ – in line with a 2014 ruling by the European Court of Justice allowing individuals to ask that embarrassing web search results about them be removed.

A searchable list of defaulters and tax cheats has been published online since 2001. Now a two-year time limit will apply to the published list.

A note explained that there had been complaints that the resource ‘can cause difficulty for the taxpayer in getting on with their life and is a… [source of] ongoing stress’.

The Revenue noted that it was not an ‘obligation’ of theirs to keep such records.