The Minister for Finance has signed a commencement order confirming the start date of 1 January 2012 for the new electronic Relevant Contracts Tax (RCT) electronic scheme.
As members will be aware, a reform of the RCT system was first announced as part of Budget 2011 and its planned implementation date was set at 1 January 2012. Finance Act 2011 provided the legislative framework for the new scheme which is contained in sections 530A to 530V of the TCA 1997. However, the new scheme was subject to the signing of a commencement order for its operation; the Minister for Finance has recently signed such order setting the start date of 1 January 2012.
The Revenue Commissioners have also made regulations, entitled Income Tax and Corporation Tax (Relevant Contracts Tax) Regulations 2011 (S.I. 651 of 2011), which set out the detailed provisions governing operation of the scheme.
As many members will already know, the new electronic RCT scheme replaces the current paper based RCT system and all communication between principal contractors and Revenue must be made electronically from 1 January. This electronic scheme is already live and principal contractors can access the system to check and update the contract details for their subcontractors that Revenue have pre-populated. As reported in Chartered AccountantsTax News recently, Revenue have to date uploaded approx. 165,000 contracts from their records.
Members are reminded that a number of transitional arrangements are in place which may help ease principals concerns about transferring from the current RCT system to the new electronic based scheme. These transitional arrangements were reported in Chartered Accountants Tax News in November.
Further details on the new electronic based RCT scheme are available on the Revenue website.