The Revenue Commissioners is using information from the Facebook website and other social networking sites to gather information on taxpayers for audit purposes.

Evert Bopp, a Dutch technology entrepreneur based in Tipperary, told The Sunday Business Post that he was surprised when a Revenue official produced printouts of his profile from several social networking websites during a recent audit.

Bopp said he received a letter several weeks ago from the Revenue Commissioners, announcing an audit. When a Revenue officer arrived to conduct the audit last Tuesday, he asked Bopp about information he had posted on his Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing profile pages, detailing his current business interests.

‘‘He wanted to know about every business and if they were related,” he said. ‘‘I was happy to answer his questions, since my tax affairs are in order, but I was very surprised that they are using this information. They are just websites on which anything can be posted, not legal documents.”

A spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners said that the use of information from Facebook and other sites was not the result of a specific policy decision.

‘‘There are no hard and fast rules on where we would acquire information from. Officials can examine any information that is available in the public domain, and that would include the internet,” he said.