RPN 2020

No. Revenue do not issue RPNs for previous tax years. If you do not have an RPN, the employee(s) must be taxed using Emergency Tax rates. Grossing up the Employee(s) to achieve the actual net pay the employee received. This is covered by legislation, which is designed to 'encourage' Employers to comply with the PAYE Modernisation rules. In layman's terms 'give such a kick up the backside they won't make the mistake again'

I have two Employee IDs. My employer issued me with a payslip for each ID and used the same Tax Credits on each. They claim that they did this because the RPN they got from Revenue had no Employee ID on it, so they used the Tax Credits based on my PPSN. Sounds dodgy to me!

Any comment on this?

Hi MartinHD,

I would echo what Stratvs said - don't jump to assumptions.

In Ireland there are over 100K employees who actually have more than one live employment with the same employer. For example you might have a nurse who has two seperate employments with the HSE. Both are registered as seperate employment ID's and your tax credits can be allocated between them.

For this reason the Revenue systems will allow separate employments to be registered and active with the same employer at the same time.

What has probabally happened in your case is that you registered your employment on MyAccount, and at the same time your new employer did as well and hence the crossover.

The only difference between the two registrations is that the one that you register yourself will not have an Employment ID (it will be blank like your employer described), but the one registered by your employer will have.

This problem has actually been very common since Revenue launched PAYE Modernisation and it has been a right pain in the neck for the people that run payroll.

It can be a particular problem where your employer is using a third party to run the payroll for them, such as their accountants or a Payroll Bureau because there is a time lag in who tells who what and when.

So I wouldnt be worried about having two active employment ID numbers - check on both and verify that all wages that you have received have been reported on one or the other.

If they have then no real problem because very thing has been reported to Revenue and ultimately it will all balance out in the end.

If I had my way I would block employees from registering their own employments. In my opinion this is a function that should only be available to the employer, and it would have avoided these problems (of which there have been a lot over the last few years)

But, thats for Revenue to act on.

As the employee you have the full power to allocate your tax credits amongst all active employments on your record, and indeed you have the power to cease them on my account.

I would presume that your employer has finally settled on one particular employment ID so I would suggest that you ensure that your credits are allocated to it and then cease the other one.

If you are unsure what to do then ask your employer. They can cease the one that they are not using and kill it off.

The title of this thread relates to 2020, but its not clear to me if your query relates to 2020 or 2021.

If it relates to 2020 then they may have done this already.

Just remember, PAYE modernisation is a relatively new system and everybody has been making mistakes and learning from them - myself included.

If your employer has reported all payments to Revenue then I would say that there is nothing underhanded to be worried about, its just a mistake and not something to be worrying about

Hope this helps,

Jason

Stratvs wrote: »

Did you get two separate payslips for the same week with different employment ID's on and more to the point did you get paid on both or one? I'm not sure what you mean when you say "they used the tax credits based on your PPSN". The tax credits they use will be whatever Revenue send on the RPN. They should, in their payroll program, check for new RPNs each time before doing the payroll run. The employer doesn't decide to base it on anything. They just "do what it says on the tin". If it is a new job you may initially have no tax credits if the previous employment has not been ceased by the employer on ROS. If it is an ongoing employment then there should be one current employment ID. But you may have had several historic employment IDs with the same employer if there were breaks in the employment in the same tax year.

Don't automatically assume there is anything "dodgy". Everything they print by way of payslips is on record with ROS.

Thanks Stratvs.
My employer - and Revenue - have confirmed that the initial RPN1 was generated in December 2019 in preparation for the 2020 Tax Year but had no Employment ID attached.