In his letter Obscene Tax Evasion Must Be Curbed (September 2), Joseph Cardona asks: “What is the IRD doing to monitor and control the tax evasion obscenity?”

It is not the purpose of this reply to list all that has been done or is being done to combat tax evasion but Mr Cardona needs to be referred to the annual reports of government departments (particularly that of the Ministry of Finance, the Economy and Investment), which are available on the Department of Information’s website.

The most recent reports show that the tax audits and investigations performed by the Inland Revenue Department in 2009 resulted in assessments and adjustments that produced an increase in tax of €13,404,294.

According to the 2010 re-port, the increase in tax as a result of investigations reached €20,338,106. Considering that, according to Mr Cardona, “over €3 million go down the drain every year at the expense of hard-pressed taxpayers” (although it is not known how Mr Cardona has arrived at this figure) then the IRD in general and the Tax Compliance Unit in particular are not as “weak” a deterrent as Mr Cardona would make them out to be!

For Mr Cardona’s and readers’ information, the fight against tax evasion is two-pronged: through detection and prevention. The almost €34 million increase in tax in two years was the result of detection.

As regards prevention, one can assume that Mr Cardona is not a tax professional as he does not seem to be aware of the many legal anti-abuse provisions and administrative measures that the department has introduced over recent years and which effectively prevent tax evasion a priori. It is a pity that the effect of these measures can never be quantified as these results would have been added to the figures shown above.