Paghe locali e conformità contributiva in Irlanda

Ireland offers a French employer an unusual combination: an EU member state, inside the euro area, whose working language is English. Contracts, payslips and dealings with the administration are conducted in English, Irish retaining official status with limited administrative use. EU social security coordination applies in the usual way, which makes posting workable without any special arrangement.

The Irish peculiarity is unified collection. The Office of the Revenue Commissioners, commonly called Revenue, collects both income tax withheld through PAYE and PRSI social insurance contributions. There is therefore no separate social body issuing a compliance certificate: the Tax Clearance Certificate covers both strands on its own, which simplifies matters for employer and provider alike.

Running payroll for a client is an unrestricted activity in Ireland, and no licence of any kind is required. What is regulated is statutory audit, the use of protected accountancy titles, and anti-money-laundering supervision, which is mandatory for accountancy and tax service providers.

Reporting is real time. Since PAYE modernisation, the employer transmits payroll data to Revenue at each payment rather than in periodic summaries. Your provider must be equipped for that, with connected software; it is a concrete selection criterion. Payslips must set out the deductions made.

The entity comes next. A foreign company may register with Revenue as an employer without incorporating a subsidiary; if you do choose an Irish company instead, the requirement for a director resident in the European Economic Area must be settled before anything else.

Employer registration goes through the eRegistration service. The employee needs a PPS Number, without which deductions cannot be applied on their own parameters. The employer retrieves from Revenue the notification setting out, for each individual, the amounts to be withheld.

A written contract is required, in English, and written information on the core terms must be provided very early in the relationship. Check next whether an Employment Regulation Order or a Sectoral Employment Order covers your activity: these sector instruments impose binding minima in several industries, regardless of membership.

Statutory notice, accrued holiday entitlement and the Irish unfair dismissal regime call, finally, for a documented procedure before any decision: a termination decided first and justified afterwards is hard to defend.

Dealings with Revenue are entirely electronic: tax compliance is evidenced by an access number, the TCAN, which the partner supplies for online verification. An old paper certificate signals a counterparty who has not kept up with the system.

No separate social security certificate is issued in Ireland. Because PRSI is collected alongside PAYE, asking for a document from the Department of Social Protection means asking for something that does not exist for this purpose. Many partnership files stall on that very confusion.

The companies register holds one final trap. The Companies Registration Office starts strike-off proceedings against companies that have not filed accounts, and the strike-off listed status is common. It does not mean immediate dissolution, but it leaves the entity legally fragile and must be cleared before any contractual commitment.