Compliance Auditor (Ireland)
12-month payroll compliance audit: USC band straddle, PRSI Oct-2026 rate step, EDS year-end reconciliation, BIK quarterly review.
Region: Ireland (en-IE). Currency: EUR. Rules: Revenue 2026.
Who this auditor is for
Picture Sinéad, who runs payroll for a 40-person manufacturing firm in Cork. Every December she faces the same question: did the software deduct the right PAYE, USC and PRSI for each employee across the whole year? The Compliance Auditor is built for that year-end reconciliation. It is equally useful for an individual employee who wants to sanity-check a full year of deductions before claiming a refund, or for a bookkeeper reviewing a client's payroll after a software migration mid-year.
What the audit actually checks
You enter gross annual pay, the PAYE, USC and PRSI actually deducted, any pension contribution, your marital status and pay period, and optionally the RPN code from your payslip. The auditor then recomputes what each deduction should have been under Revenue's 2026 rules and returns three variance figures — PAYE, USC and PRSI, each shown as expected versus paid — alongside the tax credits and standard rate cut-off point it assumed for your status.
A positive variance means more was deducted than the rules require, which usually signals an overpayment you can pursue through Revenue myAccount. A negative variance means an underpayment that could surface later as a reduced credit or a balancing statement, so it is better caught now.
The 2026 rules the audit applies
- Cut-off points. In 2026 a single person pays 20% income tax on the first €44,000 and 40% above it; the band is €53,000 for a married couple with one income and up to €88,000 for a couple with two incomes. The marital status you select drives which band the audit uses.
- Tax credits. The personal credit and the Employee (PAYE) credit are each worth €2,000 in 2026, so a typical single employee has €4,000 offsetting their PAYE bill.
- USC bands. USC is charged at 0.5% up to €12,012, 2% up to €28,700, 3% up to €70,044 and 8% above that. Income of €13,000 or less is exempt entirely.
- The October PRSI step. Employee Class A PRSI is 4.2% until 30 September 2026 and 4.35% from 1 October 2026, so the full-year expectation is a blend of the two rates.
Frequently asked questions
How big a variance between paid and expected tax is normal?
Small differences of a few euro are usually rounding across pay periods. Persistent variances of tens or hundreds of euro in PAYE, USC or PRSI point to a stale RPN, credits split across jobs, or a cut-off point that does not match your circumstances, and are worth investigating.
Why does 2026 PRSI need special handling in the audit?
All PRSI contribution rates rise by 0.15 percentage points on 1 October 2026, taking employee Class A from 4.2% to 4.35%. A full-year 2026 audit therefore has to blend nine months at the old rate with three months at the new one rather than applying a single annual rate.
What is the Employment Detail Summary and where do I get it?
The Employment Detail Summary (EDS) is the pay, PAYE, USC and PRSI record your employer reported to Revenue for the year. You can view and download it in Revenue myAccount under PAYE Services, and it is the figure set your audit results should be reconciled against at year end.
Does the auditor connect to my Revenue record?
No. It works only from the figures you type in and compares them with published Revenue 2026 rules. It never contacts Revenue, and PayslipIQ does not store your payslip data. Your myAccount record remains the authoritative source.
Audit one payslip in detail first
If the annual audit flags a variance, the quickest way to find the month it started is to run a single payslip through the Irish payslip checker and see the line-by-line breakdown.
Check an Irish payslip