Apologies for the delayed responses, I didn't realise there were some response as the thread notifications were caught by my spam filter!
@Clamball Thanks for your response. I don't think any employer would entertain making a larger payout to make good on net pay problems. I think employers tend to think in terms of gross pay and if it's been paid, it's been paid. Up to you to sort out your tax affairs and good luck... just my opinion though!
@DB74 He's on €36k since 2018 (or thereabouts), so the lump sum added on top of his salary in 2018 was all taxed at the higher rate. You're close - the lump sum was about €28k but they added some adjustments for holiday pay and other things totalling it to €32k. They've sent him out cheques correcting 2017 and 2018 which is a good start.
He was on approx €27k salary up to 2018. If he was correctly paid €36k per year since mid-2014 then the extra €9k each year would almost all be taxed at 20%. However, because of the new rules, it's all taxed in 2018 at the higher rate. To me it seems like the backpay owed:
2014 - €4800
2015 - €8600
2016 - €8900
Total = €22,300
Taxed at 40% in 2018 = €8920
Taxed at 20% in each year = €4460
Those are quite rough calculations, but it seems to me he's being done out of €4460, for argument's sake.
@mathepac We did that, got a breakdown from his employer of what extra pay he should have had each year but Revenue won't assist any further back than 2017. You've put it incredibly well:
"It seems very unfair that incompetence in area of the civil/public service should be compounded by indifference in another"
@Sophrosyne Thanks for your input. From what I saw, Revenue want to put an end to several end-of-year practices that make their life difficult under PMOD, things like sales bonuses being declared for 2018 but only paid out in 2019. How exactly it helps them, I don't know but that seems to be their emphasis from what I read.
We may end up contacting a local TD or councillor.
Thanks all