I'm bored so I'm going to tell you a story.

Way back in the mists of time (late 70's), PAYE workers held some of the most militant strikes ever seen in Ireland.

They demand a more equitable taxation system for workers. Workers paid income tax through the Pay As >

You Earn (PAYE) scheme, tax and PRSI deducted directly from your wages.

The failure of Fianna Fáil to introduce increased taxation for prosperous farmers and wealthier members of society was the issue. Workers, PAYE employees, correctly felt that they were shouldering the

tax burden of running the country. One of the big issues was that the self-employed were getting away with murder on taxation and the figures showed that indeed was the case.

Workers were fighting to replace an unjust tax system and to ensure that the wealthy paid >

their ‘fair share’ of tax.

On 20th January 1980, what the BBC described as the ‘largest peaceful protest in post-war Europe’, took place in Dublin.

In a massive general strike, 700,000 paye workers took to the street. Fianna Fail shit themselves, but it would still take >

another 3 years of protests before unions were satisfied that enough change was promised, or you could take the view that the powers that be sat it out until it all quietened down and didn't really change a whole lot.

Either way, some changes did take place. One of these >

changes was an obligation on all employers were obliged to make a declaration to Revenue on an person they paid more than 3000 punt to in a year.

The purpose was to end 'Cash in Hand' operations. Cash in Hand is also the basis of the 'Black Economy', in Construction it's

known as 'on the lump', no tax or PRSI is paid by either the worker or the employer.

Employers fucking hated it, still do because what it did was force them to identify their workers which they were labeling as self-employed when they were really employees.

This is what's >

known by the public as 'Bogus Self Employment' and is euphemistically known as 'Irregular Employment' by Revenue and Social Welfare.

Bogus Self Employment is fraud, it is tax evasion, it was a primary focus of the PAYE demonstrations.

As in all things, change was slow and >

there wasn't a whole lot effort put into chasing down fraudulent employers, but some effort was made.

In the early 80s, the courier industry appeared out of nowhere and grew very quickly. It was a Black Market operation almost in it's entirety. Pushbike, motorbike and van >

couriers were largely paid cash in hand by the companies they worked for.

For reasons unknown, sometime around '91, the Revenue Commissioners took an interest in courier companies and correctly pointed out that they were not meeting their statutory obligations to declare

payments of 3000 punt or more to workers. It was Courier companies turn to shit themselves.

There were some household names at it, Securicor maybe not the biggest but because of its other operations, probably the best known name took the lead.

They got an accountancy firm

to represent ALL courier companies, not just Securicor, in what the Revenue Commissioners refer to as 'negotiations' with the Revenue Commissioners.

These were not negotiations, this was full on, bald headed lobbying. What the courier companies wanted, was for Revenue to >

classify all couriers as self-employed. Remember, some of these companies had been operating entirely in the black economy for almost a decade, they hadn't met any tax or prsi obligations, their potential tax liabilities were enough to sink them.

Couriers didn't have an >

employment status, they could be either employees or self-employed, nobody had looked into it. Courier companies needed them to be self-employed, their very survival as courier companies depended on it.

Regardless of employment status, courier companies had unequivocally >

ignored their obligation to declare payments over 3000 punt.

Revenue were prepared from the outset to ignore that courier companies had failed to declare. They were open to the idea of labeling all couriers as self-employed too.

This was nothing new for Revenue, for years >

they had decided on an ad-hoc basis whether workers were employees or self-employed by group and class. Except that you can't decide employment status by group or class.

Sometime around 1992, a number of couriers were 'selected' as test cases, that's how the secretary general >

of the Dept SW explained it.

The dept of SW is entirely responsible for employment status, revenue only act as collection agents for the dept of SW for PRSI, at least that's Revenue's official story, so it was to the Dept of SW that these 'test cases' were put for

adjudication. The Scope Section is an office of the dept sw, their only task is to make 'insurability of employment' decisions based on case law and precedents handed down from the courts.

You see, employment status, employee or self-employed, has nothing at all to do with what

you 'want' or are 'happy' to be, you must fit the legal criteria handed down from the courts.

AFAIK there were 3 cases put to the Scope Section and all of them were determined to be employees and not self-employed. It's unknown if all 3 were appealed to the social welfare

appeals office, what is known is that only one case made it to an appeal.

So, what's the social welfare appeals office?

It's another office of the department of social welfare. The workers in it are social welfare employees and can return to work in the dept at any time. The >

top position, is the Chief Appeals Officer who has a dual role as part of the senior management team of the dept sw.

In June 1995, the appeal was heard. The Scope Section decision on the single courier was overturned, and there that decision sat for the next 3 year because

it was one decision on one courier and it couldn't determine the employment status of all other pushbike, motorcycle and van courier in the country. The legislation simply doesn't exist.

In parallel with this Courier process, the famous Denny case was taking its course. >

Sandra Mahon was working as a supermarket food demonstrator. Denny, her employer, classified her as self-employed. She wrote to the Scope Section and they made a determination that she was an employee and not self-employed. This was also appealed to the SWAO >

Unlike with the courier worker decision from Scope, the SWAO hadn't overturned Sandra's Scope decision.

The importance for the worker here is that if the SWAO upholds the Scope decision, it is the state who must defend it in the higher courts if the employer challenges it

further, but if the swao overturns the scope decision, it is the worker who must pay to challenge it further.

Denny did challenge the SWAO decision in the higher courts, from beginning to end the process took about 6 years and cost hundred of thousands in legal fees.

Back to

courier companies. By 1996, the writing was on the wall, Denny had lost every step of the way and courier companies were sitting on a liability time bomb. The were still lobbing revenue to label all couriers as self-employed, still failing to declare payments over 3000.

Oh, I

forgot to mention, the SWAO is a secret quasi judicial tribunal on a par with the circuit court. Once a year they put out a report with a few anonymised samples of cases. It just so happens that the 1995 test case is one of those anonymised samples and it declared that the

courier worker appeal was of wider significance to the industry.

Early in 1997, the accountancy firm, senior management from securicor and the chief inspector of taxes met in the Burlington Hotel.

It was here that they came up with the 'Special Tax Agreement' to label all

couriers as self-employed - details here https://www.patreon.com/posts/44209064 

The Courier companies pushed hard to get Revenue to accept that the single decision in the SWAO was a precedent setting test case but Revenue was way to cute to put their neck in the noose of an unlawful test

case so instead they firstly declined to accept the swao decision as a test case, stated that they were not bound by social welfare decisions (important point, shows they are more than collection agents) but that they would act in 'uniform' with the Dept SWs decision to label

all couriers as self-employed. Take a minute to appreciate just how machiavellian Revenue was being - Revenue had been in negotiations with courier companies for 5 or 6 years at this stage, they drew up the special tax agreement, they pulled all the strings and yet they deflected

all the blame for an unlawful special tax agreement, which made all couriers self-employed with the stroke of a pen, a pen revenue wielded, not social welfare, you have to appreciate the deviousness.

That declaration to revenue courier companies were meant to make, the 3000

punt thing, Revenue simply shrugged it off, told the companies they were always obliged employee or not. And that was that, almost 2 decades of an entire industry operating in the black economy and revenue just shrugged it off.

Now we get to the real underlying deviousness,

Revenue rushed to get this special tax agreement across the line in march/april 1997 because the denny case was all but finished in the supreme court, the denny decision came out in dec 1997.

Revenue, regardless of what the Denny case precedents were, had in it sweaty little

paw, a special tax agreement made on a group and class of workers which could not be overturned.

There simply is no avenue/facility in Irish law to overturn an unlawful group/class decision. Individual couriers can go through scope but the decision has already been made on

the individual courier by the swao using its own makeyup precedents which neither scope nor the courts know about. When it gets to the swao the scope decision is overturned, always is, at least half a dozen have been.

So revenue have this in their paw, nobody knows about it,

it can't be challenged on a group basis and individual appeals are doomed to fail, what do they do next?

Revenue use the courier agreement as a precedent to set up the eRCT system, a paye system which allows employers in construction label employees as self-employed without

any input from the worker. There are other agreements in other sectors all based on calling PAYE workers self-employed.

That's it on Revenue for tonight. Hope you enjoyed.