Employer registration and set-up in Ireland
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Getting set up as an employer in Ireland means registering with Revenue for PAYE before your first employee starts work, then making real-time payroll submissions on or before every payday. Miss either step and you face penalties, interest and potential back-liability for tax you should have deducted.
Register as an employer with Revenue before anyone starts
You must register for PAYE/Employer as a separate registration from your corporation tax or VAT number. If you already have a Tax Registration Number (TRN) for the business, you add the employer registration through Revenue Online Service (ROS). If the business is not yet registered at all, you register first for the entity itself, then add the employer tax head.
What Revenue needs at this stage: your business name and address, the date on which the first employee will start, and the nature of the business. There is no fee. Revenue will confirm your employer registration and you will then be able to file payroll submissions under PAYE Modernisation.
Do this before day one — not after the employee's first payday. Running payroll without an active employer registration creates a gap in your compliance record that is hard to correct cleanly.
Understand what you are deducting and paying
Every time you run payroll, three separate deductions and contributions apply to almost all employees.
Income tax runs at 20% on earnings up to roughly €44,000 for a single person, and 40% on anything above that. Ireland does not use a personal allowance; instead, employees receive tax credits that reduce the actual tax owed. The most common are the Personal Tax Credit and the Employee Tax Credit. Revenue issues a Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN) for each employee — this tells you exactly what credits and cut-off points to apply. You use the RPN, not a manual calculation, to determine what to deduct.
Universal Social Charge (USC) is charged on gross income in bands: 0.5%, 2%, 3% and 8%, depending on how much the employee earns. Low earners below the annual USC threshold are exempt. The RPN includes USC details.
PRSI under Class A (which covers most employees) splits into an employee contribution of approximately 4.1% and an employer contribution of approximately 11.15%. The employer pays both — you deduct the employee's share from their gross pay and add your own contribution on top. This is often the largest payroll cost beyond the salary itself, so factor it into your employment budget from the start.
Make real-time submissions on or before payday
Under PAYE Modernisation, you submit a Payroll Submission Request (PSR) to Revenue through ROS on or before the date you pay the employee. There is no monthly catch-up; each pay run requires its own submission tied to that specific payment date.
The PSR contains each employee's PPS number, gross pay, tax credits applied, income tax deducted, USC deducted, and PRSI for both employee and employer. Revenue reconciles this against the RPN it has issued.
Payment of the PAYE, USC and PRSI you have collected is due to Revenue monthly (or quarterly if your liability is small enough for Revenue to grant quarterly status). The filing and payment deadlines for monthly filers are tied to the 14th or 23rd of the following month depending on whether you file and pay online — which, in practice, all employers using ROS do.
Comply with statutory employment obligations alongside payroll
Employer registration is the tax-side obligation. The employment law side runs in parallel and affects payroll directly.
Employees are entitled to 4 working weeks of paid annual leave per year. You must pay employees at their normal rate during leave — this affects how you process payroll in periods when leave is taken.
From 2026, pension auto-enrolment under the "My Future Fund" scheme is being introduced. This will require employers to enrol eligible employees automatically and make employer pension contributions. If you are hiring now or expanding your workforce, build awareness of this into your planning; the contribution rates and eligibility thresholds will phase in over time.
You are also required to provide employees with a written statement of their core terms within five days of starting, and a full written contract within one month. While this is an employment law obligation rather than a payroll one, gaps here can complicate how you treat the employment for tax and PRSI purposes.
Keep records accurately and accessibly
Revenue can audit employer payroll records going back several years. You must retain records of all RPNs used, all PSRs filed, payslips issued, and any expenses or benefits processed through payroll. Payslips are a legal requirement — every employee must receive one on or before each payday showing gross pay, all deductions itemised, and net pay.
If you run Benefits in Kind — company cars, private medical insurance, preferential loans — these must also be processed through payroll and reported to Revenue. They are not optional add-ons to deal with at year end.
---
Run HR and payroll in Ireland with Mellow
Mellow brings HR, payroll and 12 AI agents into one platform — built to handle Ireland properly, with payroll included, from £4 per employee per month. The AI agents don't just answer questions; they generate contracts, run cost estimates and draft letters for you.
[Start a free trial →](/register)