Hi guys, as many of you will know, I've spent 21 years exposing the billion euro corruption that is bogus self-employment. Over the years, only 3 journalists have had the balls to say anything at all about it. These 3 are Philip Boucher Hayes, Cianan Brennan and Mick Clifford.
Bogus self-employment is rife in media as we can all see with RTE who are under investigation at the moment. Regardless of what criticisms people have of Mick, he has never balked at exposing the bogus self-employment corruption.
The Irish Examiner is the only newspaper which will go near this and trust me, I have tried with all the rest of them. There is a wall of silence in the media about bogus self employment, imho RTE are completely compromised politically
by being under investigation by the state and that is why they pull punches with government representatives. If any of you know of a journalist who will give the same time and effort to exposing bogus self-employment,
and indeed to working with a wide range of whistleblowers who I know and work with personally, as Mick does, please feel free to put them in contact with me.
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The Chairperson of @RevenueIE is deliberately misleading the Public Accounts Committee. The latest communication from @RevenueIE is dated the 5th November and follows on from Revenue's refusal to allow an investigation, requested by the Public Accounts Committee, into Revenue's
unlawful decision to label all couriers as self-employed at the stroke of a pen in 1997 (backdated to the early 1980s).
It is essential that this thread be read in conjunction with the “Code of Practice on Determining Employment Status, July 2021” referred to by Revenue in
The Revenue Commissioners, The Department of Social Welfare and the Social Welfare Appeals Office conspired with Employer Representatives to label employees as self-employed in order for individual businesses, entire sectors and
the State itself, to evade employers PRSI.
The method used to achieve this tax evasion, is #bogusselfemployment. The Revenue Commissioners and the SWAO and the SW Department label groups and classes of workers as 'self-employed' using unlawful 'Test Cases'.
The loss in PRSI
and Taxes is estimated to be in excess of 1 billion euro each and every year.
From 1995 until January 2019, the Department of SW and the SWAO openly admitted, in writing, to using test cases and the approach of test cases to label groups and classes of workers as Self Employed.
I’m not letting this go, the Chief Appeals Officer of the Social Welfare Appeals Office deliberately lied to the SW Committee about the use of test cases.
I made a complaint to SIPO that the CAO deliberately lied.
SIPO ruled that the CAO did give ‘erroneous information’ to
the Committee. The Social Welfare Appeals Office DOES use unlawful test cases to determine employment status by group and by class.
In July this year, the current SW minister, @HHumphreysFG repeated this lie in a Dail reply to Paul Murphy.
The Ceann Comhairle has now
referred the Minister’s Dail reply to the Committee on Privileges and oversight.
There must be accountability for the Chief Appeals Officer’s lie. The lie costs the taxpayer 1 billion euro each and every year. It is fraud, deliberate fraud, covered up by the CAO and Munister
The first pertinent question on @bogusselfemployment was from @PaulMcauliffe. Paul asked about the Eversheds Sutherland report which had found 157 'contractors' out of 433
@PaulMcauliffe were misclassified as 'Self-employed'. That's a very high rate of misclassification, slightly over 36%.
Paul specifically asked if @RTE had robustly responded and if @rte was correctly complying with Revenue guidelines.
@RTE's HR director confirmed the results of the Eversheds
@PaulMcauliffe@rte Sutherland report and stated that reviews and meetings with managers had taken place to ensure compliance 'Going Forward'
But that doesn't exactly answer the question Paul asked, the true factual position is that @RTE was NOT compliant with regulations and not compliant spanning
Revenue finally replied in writing to the questions asked by the Public Accounts Committee about #bogusselfemployment. The reply is dated February 2021 and I will be sharing it on this thread later tonight. It confirms every single word of this thread to date and drops SW in it.
The first question from the PAC was -
"A test case regarding bogus self employment amongst couriers was discussed. Please provide further details in relation to this case including detailing any associated costs"
Revenue replied with -
"There is no one specific “test” case.
However, couriers were regarded as self employed for PRSI purposes as a result of a Social Welfare
Appeals OfficerOfficer’s decision. In the interest of uniformity Revenue decided, >