New Business - I am confused about Revenue returns

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MeathCommute

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Hi. It's me again. I set up a Limited Company for the purpose of IT contracting. I am the sole director and my wife is the secretary. She is not going to get paid anything because we want to keep things simple. The IT contracting money will be paid into a business bank account. I am billing the employer for my services and adding VAT of 23%. I understand how to do a ROS return of the VAT on the website. The part I am really confused about is the PAYE return. I am supposed to do the PAYE return once a month. Is this depending on how much I withdraw from the business account as "wages"? I believe this is the P30 return. As I am a director, and I am merely taking money out of the company as drawings, is this "wages" that I am paying myself in a PAYE capacity e.g. with my private PPS number? Is that the way I do it?
 
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What do you mean, you're billing the company for your daily rate plus 23%?

You can't bill your own company, your company bills the client, and it pays you a salary as an employee. There's no such thing as drawings for a company director, you can draw a salary / directors fees (subject to PAYE in the normal way), or the company can advance a loan to you (subject to company law restrictions, and certain other tax requirements if it isn't paid back within 6 months of year end).

If you're drawing wages then that's exactly what it is, it's not "wages", it really is wages!
 
Thanks. I changed the original post because of the awkward way I had originally put it. I am billing the employing company for the contract work. OK. Thanks for clarifying. I am going to draw wages on a monthly basis. So now I come to the P30 returns on ROS....it shows the taxation period as 1/1/2017-31/3/2017. Should I send the returns in on 1/4/2017? I thought it was a montly return? Should I go by what ROS is saying?
 
Returns can be either every month, or every three months.

Have you spoken to an accountant about all this? Even if you don't use one for day-to-day stuff (unlikely you'd need to), a couple of hours spent with someone good to set you straight on the basics would be money well spent. You CAN learn and do it all yourself, but you'll end up spending a lot of time doing so, and you're very exposed to the risks of getting it wrong.
 
Thanks all. I have an accountant on board. I met him for advice a few weeks ago. All is fine. I am just trying to understand the fields on ROS as I only just got the digital cert, and logged in last night for the first time
 
One other question, is there a difference between me as a director taking drawings, or is it going be the case that I have to declare tax, prsi and usc on all drawings, as wages, and that I am the employee AND the director?
Can I be an employee, and the sole director? In the eyes of the state, am I going to be showing a PRSI contribution under my own PPS number at the end of the year? Does this show as class S or A? When I am filling in the PAYE screen on ROS, and I select P30, do I have to know the correct tax, PRSI and USC myself in advance of filling it out? On a monthly basis, am I expected to know the accumulated charge figures for each of the fields? Sorry for the queries. It's all a learning curve, and once I know, I will be able to get it done every year no problem. My accountant says I can ring him when filling it in, if in doubt. I am appreciative of all help given here. I'd rather have it sussed out before I have to ring him. Thanks
 
I assume you will be taking a regular monthly salary from the account via standing order. This is what we do as directors of our Ltd company. So each January I contact the accountant to request details of PAYE, USC and PRSI amounts as per any budget changes. They send us each a payslip to show the breakdown of tax per month. We then get the same amount of a salary per month for the year. I file the P30 every 3 months using the figures accountant has provided. I'd speak to your accountant again and decide on what your salary is going to be. Then he/she can provide the relevent tax deduction details. If you are claiming expenses they are not taxed. Again maybe have a word to accountant in this regard. I'm sure you're paying them enough to do your accounts so you may as well use their services.

ETA: P30 will be done in April - think you have up to mid April to file return.
 
It may seem overkill, but it might be worth considering using a payroll package (we use Sage One Payroll online), even if it's just for one person. This does all the calculations for you, you just make sure you check the company director option when setting up any employee who's a director. It also generates all the returns for you so you can upload them to ROS. If you decide you need an extra payment on a particular payrun, you just put it in as an extra (gross) amount, and it'll work it all out. As well as saving time, especially if payments vary, it gives a degree of comfort that calculations and returns have been done correctly. [Usual disclaimers: I've no connection with any package, other than as a paying customer]
 

Thanks a million for this. I've signed up to Sage One to help with the process
 
Hi. Sorry to resurrect this discussion. I am using Sage One Payroll now to work out the PAYE, PRSI and USC etc. I have a (thick) question. I decided that I wanted to pay myself 3000 a month out of the business as a wage, and lodge that into my personal account. I set up a pay run on Sage to start from today (I had enough personal savings to get by until now). When I put the €3000 into Sage, it netted it to less of course, so I changed the figure to €4000 instead to net to a figure of €3152.34. When I am filling in my P30 on 1st May, will I use the figures that Sage supplied for the PAYE, PRSI and USC? I am finding this confusing. Should I have transferred the €3152.34 instead of the €4000 as the drawings?
As a married self employed person taking the tax credits for myself, am I entitled to tax credits of €3300 + €950 for the year? If I make a balls of my P30 returns, would my accountant be able to rectify this for me at a later stage? I am trying to get it right first time.
 
If you entered €4,000 and the payroll package produced a figure of €3,152.34 after deductions, then you should have transferred €3,152.34 to your personal bank account and send the difference to Revenue by 19 May.

You should use the tax credits on your certificate of tax credits. If they are wrong you can get then corrected.

If you get it all wrong, yes it can be rectified at year end. The year end return the, p35, covers the complete year.

There could be a penalty if you underpaid during the year, but it is really only theoretical in this case.
 
This thread is completely bonkers; pay an accountant to look after your stuff...it will be self-financing.
 
MeathCommute said:
It's the P30 that scares me. Don't want revenue coming after me for mistakes
Click to expand...

The whole point of using a package is that it takes care of working everything out. It should generate the P30 file for you, ready for uploading to ROS. Put the gross figure into the package. At the end of every month pay yourself whatever is shown as the net figure. Generate the P30 file, upload that to ROS and there's nothing more to do (assuming a direct debit is set up).

I'd strongly recommend getting your accountant to spend time with you to ensure everything is set up OK, but once it is it should be a trivial amount of time per month to do everything related to PAYE and easily done by yourself.
 
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