As far as the Office of the Revenue Commissioners is concerned, this year's report of the C&AG Mr John Buckley dwells mainly on his perennial concerns – how much tax is written off and why? There is the occasional gem of particular interest in his statistical analysis; not least that most of the tax take comes from the professional sector. Eight times as much, for example, as comes from farming.

The breakdown of which tax comes from where aggregates the take from Domestic VAT, PAYE, Self-Assessed Income Tax, Corporation Tax and Capital Gains Tax only, and the C&AG's figures are based on percentages of tax collected in 2007. Mr Buckley observes that “the quality of this analysis is subject to the accuracy of the trade sector code recorded on the tax record”, a somewhat self evident observation which only serves to throw doubt on the statistics. Assuming however that they are largely correct, the professional sector contributes most at 16%, followed by construction and manufacturing. Bear in mind though that these are 2007 figures, and it's unlikely that the construction contribution is as prominent still.

The full table is set out below