The employer’s requirement to deduct tax and social insurance from their employees should be, and in most instances is, straightforward. However the largest tax liabilities arising from tax audits typically arises as a result of these taxes not being correctly operated. With the recent substantial increases in income tax, the introduction of the Universal Social Charge and the extension of PRSI the risk of an employer mistake in the operation of these withholdings has greatly increased. An additional factor is that the same mistake tends to occur over a number of years for a number of employees so small amounts of tax not collected can accumulate very quickly.
Brown & Lombard have extensive experience in advising on employer withholding issues and have advised clients ranging from large multinationals to sole traders having one employee. Typical areas of difficulty include not operating PAYE on benefits and allowances, using the wrong social insurance class for directors, the incorrect operation of PAYE on non-resident directors and not correctly applying PAYE to employees seconded to Ireland. We advise on the entire spectrum of employer tax issues ranging from the establishment of the company to tax audits and the issues relating to redundancy of employee(s).
