Decision
Mr H and Office of the Revenue Commissioners
From Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC)
Case number: 130125
Published on
From Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC)
Case number: 130125
Published on
Whether the Revenue was justified in deciding that no further records exist or can be found relating to the applicant's request for records relating to his tax affairs from the year 2000 to date.
27 February 2014
On 16 October 2012, the applicant made an FOI request for all information relating to "my own tax affairs from the year 2000 to date ". The Revenue's decision of 19 November 2012 released in full five records (a total of 35 pages) it had located. The applicant sought an internal review of this decision and on 17 December 2012, the Revenue issued an internal review decision saying that no further records exist. On 18 May 2013, the applicant sought a review by this Office of the Revenue's refusal to release additional records of relevance to his request.
On 03 December 2013, Ms Mary Byrne, Investigator, wrote to the applicant outlining her preliminary views on the matter and providing him with an opportunity to make any further comments which he wished to have taken into account before this Office reached a final decision. No response was received from the applicant by the requested response date of 24 December 2013. Accordingly, I consider that the review should now be brought to a close by the issue of a formal, binding decision.
In carrying out this review, I have had regard to the correspondence between the Revenue and the applicant as set out above. I have had regard also to communications between this Office and the applicant, and between the Office and the Revenue. Finally, I have had regard to the provisions of the FOI Act.
This review is concerned solely with the question of whether or not the Revenue was justified in its decision to refuse access to further relevant records on the basis that the records do not exist or cannot be found after all reasonable steps have been taken to ascertain their whereabouts.
The Revenue's position is that it cannot locate further relevant records. Accordingly, section 10(1)(a) of the FOI Act is relevant, which provides that a request for access to a record may be refused if the record does not exist, or if searches for a record that is known to exist (but cannot be found) have been reasonable.
The Commissioner's role in a case such as this is to review the decision of the public body and to decide whether that decision was justified. This means that I must have regard to the evidence available to the decision maker and the reasoning used by the decision maker in arriving at his/her decision. The evidence in "search" cases consists of the steps actually taken to search for records along with miscellaneous other evidence about the record management practices of the public body on the basis of which the public body concluded that the steps taken to search for records was reasonable. The Commissioner's understanding of his role in such cases was approved by Mr Justice Quirke in the High Court case of Matthew Ryan and Kathleen Ryan and the Information Commissioner (2002 No. 18 M.C.A., available on the website of this Office at www.oic.ie).
In its submission dated 19 July 2013, the Revenue said that it conducted various paper and electronic searches under the applicant's tax reference number within the Limerick and Clare districts. It said that data from taxpayers is scanned and electronically stored. The material is indexed according to the tax reference number. The computer records were searched under all relevant systems where such records would be held i.e. the Integrated Taxation Processing system, the Customer Notes system and the Integrated Contacts system. Two further searches by the Revenue were unable to locate any further records relevant to this request.
In his application for review to this Office, the applicant referred to a number of issues with regard to his dealings with the Revenue in or around 2011. These included the deduction of money from his wages without his prior consent or without contact with him; how the Revenue handled his tax affairs and seemingly conflicting information provided to him by Revenue officials. I must point out that requests for information, as opposed to actual records, are not valid requests under the FOI Act. The FOI Act does not require public bodies to create records if none exist and does not oblige public bodies to answer general queries. The FOI Act does not generally provide a mechanism for answering questions, except to the extent that a question can reasonably be inferred to be a request for a record containing the answer to the question asked or the information sought.
In this case, the applicant's original FOI request was for records of his own tax affairs. While the applicant clearly has concerns with regard to his dealings with the Revenue, all that is before me in this review is the question of whether or not the Revenue has properly dealt with his request for his tax records. Should he wish to do so, it is open to the applicant to seek records that would contain the answers to the questions he has regarding his contacts with the Revenue by way of making a fresh FOI request for such records to the Revenue.
Having reviewed the steps taken by the Revenue to identify the records sought in response to the applicant's FOI request, and the explanations provided to this Office, I am satisfied that the Revenue was justified in concluding that no further records exist that came within the scope of this review. Accordingly, I find that the decision of the Revenue was correctly made in accordance with section 10(1)(a) of the FOI Act.
Having carried out a review under section 34(2) of the FOI Act, I hereby affirm the Revenue's refusal of further records of relevance to the request.
A party to a review, or any other person affected by a decision of the Information Commissioner following a review, may appeal to the High Court on a point of law arising from the decision. Such an appeal must be initiated not later than eight weeks from the date on which notice of the decision was given to the person bringing the appeal.
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Sean Garvey
Senior Investigator