Retailer must repay €8.87m in Covid wage supports after losing Revenue challenge
Gordon Deegan
A major retailer must repay €8.87 million to the Revenue Commissioners after wrongly claiming that amount during the Covid-19 pandemic in wage subsidy payments for its staff.
After hearing evidence and submissions over eight days across 2025 and this year at the Tax Appeals Commission (TAC), Commissioner Simon Noone has found that Revenue was correct in raising the €8.87 million Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) assessment on the unnamed retailer in 2024.
The retailer received the €8.872 million across 10 months from September 2020 to June 2021 - which worked out at an average €887,281 per month.
Revenue issued its assessment after finding that the retailer had failed to demonstrate to the satisfaction of Revenue that its business had experienced or was expected to experience a 30 per cent reduction in revenues turnover during the relevant periods.
The retailer carries on a wide variety of business and one part of its business was deemed non-essential and was required to close during various Covid-19 lock-down periods in 2020 and 2021.
Appealing the Revenue assessment to the TAC, the retailer submitted that this business division of its overall business had reduced revenues of 30 per cent from September to December 2020 and reduced revenues of 45 per cent from January to June 2021 and accordingly received EWSS for those two periods.
A witness for the retailer told the hearing that the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and presented a grim economic scenario, both for the economy at large and the retailer in particular.
The retailer argued that had it not been eligible to avail of the EWSS scheme to support employment, there would have been a strong possibility that it would have had to make staff redundant.
The retailer stated that those employees would not only have lost their connection with the retailer, but would also have had to claim the Pandemic Unemployment Payment from the Government.
He said that it was clear to him and his management team that the Appellant had divisions, and therefore it decided to apply for EWSS in respect of a division, which was classified as non-essential and therefore closed during lockdowns.
Revenue did not accept that certain business divisions operated by the retailer constituted separate business divisions for the purpose of claiming EWSS.
Noone found as a fact that the retailer did not have separate business divisions but was a unified retail organisation.
Noone said that he is satisfied that the retailer has not demonstrated that it had individual business divisions with clearly distinct management structures, as required by the guidelines.
A note at the end of the 55-page ruling states that the TAC has been requested to state and sign a case for the opinion of the High Court.
