PRSI Refund

highgiant1985

HI Folks,

Trying to help my sister out she earned less than 26k so is entitled to a PRSI refund I believe.

I've found the forum

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Forms/Documents/prsiref1.pdf

which I think is the form she needs to fill out to apply for it however I notice it looks for a breakdown of the PRSI weeks/classes and for an ER to fill out the details.

1 - My sister hasn't a clue about PRSI weeks / classes - is she expected to fill this information out? I'll ask if she has P35 for previous years but she may not.

2 - She no longer works for the ER - small company not sure how approachable they might be if she goes back looking for this information.

Is there a simpler way for her to request a PRSI refund? The PAYE Refund is very straight forward no issues.

Thanks

Darren

barneystinson

From your post you don't seem to know what rates / classes of PRSI she was paying at, so I am not sure you understand how this works, as you may find that she is not entitled to a refund.

A person is entitled to a refund of any Health Levy paid in a year, if their total reckonable income for that year is less than €26k (i.e. €500 x 52).

A person only pays (or paid, I should say) Health Levy in a pay period where they are in Class A1 for PRSI (over €500 gross if paid weekly).

So, she will be entitled to a refund of any Health Levy she has paid in the periods she was earning over €500, provided her earnings for the entire year were under €26k.

Generally the ways this can happen are something like this:

- She didn't work the full year, but in every week she worked, she earned over €500. (e.g. worked 40 weeks @ €600 p.w. = €24k, so she pays Health Levy each week, but over the year as a whole she earned less than €26k).

- She works for the whole year but her pay (and PRSI class) changes during the year (e.g. 26wks @ €450, 26wks @ €530 = €25,480; she will have paid Health Levy on the 26wks @ €530, so will be entitled to a refund).

So, unless something like the above has happened in your sister's case, you'll be flogging a dead horse...

As regards making a claim, I made one last year, and all I did was send my P21 balancing statement along with a cover letter to the PRSI refunds section.

Hope that is of help to you.

highgiant1985

perfect makes sense. yeah should have said she works shift work and so would have earned higher amounts in some weeks that would have put her to A1 hence the query.

barneystinson

highgiant1985 wrote: »

perfect makes sense. yeah should have said she works shift work and so would have earned higher amounts in some weeks that would have put her to A1 hence the query.

Ok, well then I suggest just get P21s for the last few years, send them in with a cover letter requesting a refund of any health levy paid. The Social Welfare records will have the detail of how many weeks she was at each class (provided the employer returned it correctly on their end of year P35), so they'll be able to calculate a refund based on that.

Good luck.

delly

Barney, do you mind me asking how long it took to get your refund? I put in an application a few weeks back and presumed it would be as swift as the PAYE refund (credit due for an excellent service), but have since read posts stating that it can take 6 to 8 months. I'm just wondering if this was the case with yourself, and did you get an acknowledgment from them having received your claim at the start?

barneystinson

delly wrote: »

Barney, do you mind me asking how long it took to get your refund? I put in an application a few weeks back and presumed it would be as swift as the PAYE refund (credit due for an excellent service), but have since read posts stating that it can take 6 to 8 months. I'm just wondering if this was the case with yourself, and did you get an acknowledgment from them having received your claim at the start?

Just checked my stuff:

I wrote away for it on 10th May.
Didn't get any acknowledgement (not surprising since it's all paper based).
Rang in mid-August to enquire about status / progress.
Got a cheque back in early October. (Just in time to pay my car tax! )
So that's a full 5 months, and I doubt it'll have gotten any faster since, as the volume of claims is probably going up.

delly

Thanks for the reply. I suppose its best to forget about it and hopefully i'll get a nice little cheque sometime during the Summer.

Charisteas

Hey guys, I also have a PRSI query.

I earn around 27,000 and I was placed on PRSI class A1 for the full year of 2010, thus paying almost 2000 in PRSI.

However, my salary would often fluctuate from month-to-month, so sometimes my monthly gross would be 1900, other times it could be 2300.

According the welfare website, the the PRSI monthly band for class A1 is 2167.00 per month. And after sifting through all my payslips for 2010, it seems that I was only over the A1 threshold for about 6 months of the year, and should have been in class AL for the other 6 months.

I checked my records for 2009, and it seems that I was indeed alternatively changed from A1 to AL throughout the duration of the year, as is also evident on my P60 for that year.

So do you think I have a claim to make for 2010?

Predalien

Not sure if anyone can help or if this is a stupid question but I work part time and my hours can vary quite a lot, this means that some weeks I pay PRSI and other weeks pay none. Taking a full year (2010) into account had I earned the money equally every week I would have paid no PRSI, but because of the weeks where I earned more I paid just over €300 during the year. Is there any way I can apply for a refund of this or does it simply not work that way? Seems unfair that if my wages had been spread equally I wouldn't have paid anything.

delly

No reason why you can't apply for refund. You'll be waiting a while, but send in the forms anyway and see.

Predalien

Does anyone know how long these refunds take to be processed? Have seen on some forums that it could be as long as 8 months! Seems ridiculous since I worked out how much I had overpaid for 3 years in about 5 minutes.

Legend100

I remember i sent one in for a client last year in Feb and it wasnt refunded until November

Havn't sent any in since then so not sure if it has improved this year

allthedoyles

I sent one in March 2010 and refund received January 2011

delly

Just a small bump folks, I rang up today to check the progress on my refund application and the guy I spoke to said while it was in progress, they would move into the 'priority' pile. It might be worth doing the same to speed things up. Number is 016732586.