Fuel firm loses appeal to €1.3m tax bill linked to ‘green diesel’
A fuel distribution company has lost its challenge against a tax bill of over €1.3m from Revenue over its failure to keep proper records of sales of large volumes of marked diesel to a customer suspected of involvement in fuel laundering.
The Tax Appeals Commission, or TAC, has ruled that the unnamed company is liable to pay the demand following an extended Revenue audit into its affairs between from the start of April 2012 and the end of 2014.
The sum was based on the difference between the excise duty charged at the standard rate and discount rate for agricultural diesel.
A hearing of the TAC was informed that the company kept no records of the address of a customer or his vehicle registration number to whom it sold over 3.7 million litres of low sulphur gas oil, or Lsgo, — otherwise known as “green diesel” — over a two-year period up to the end of March in 2013.
Lsgo is a marked fuel which means it is illegal if used as a fuel for road vehicles.
TAC heard that the customer purchased around 36,000 litres of the fuel each week for which he would pay €30,000 in cash.
The company director said he did not believe the transactions were unusual as the firm was lodging €150,000 in cash sales each week on average.
Revenue claimed the company facilitated the Lsgo to be used for fuel laundering by failing to comply with Mineral Oil Tax Regulations which required it to keep the name and vehicle registration number of its customers. As a consequence the true identity of the customer suspected of fuel laundering remains concealed from Revenue.
TAC Commissioner Conor Kennedy ruled the company was obliged to obtain the name, address and vehicle registration number of customers. Mr Kennedy claimed the evidence of witnesses on behalf of the company were “unreliable”.
