Deloitte offers a confidential client payroll bureau service. Our payroll team is part of the tax practice, which assists in ensuring that the appropriate payroll treatment is applied to the various pay items. As companies grow and laws change, employment issues become more complex. Among the most serious challenges businesses face today is compliance with multifaceted rules, which impact on payroll operation. Deloitte offers a comprehensive solution to deal with payroll obligations so clients can concentrate on running their businesses.
Many companies can struggle with gathering the information required for correct payroll processing in a timely and organised manner. There can be multiple information sources relevant to payroll, so procedures need to be designed to ensure information is provided on time and in a sensible format.
Best practice for improving payroll processes:
Plan: Have a payroll process improvement plan with implementation timelines.
Automate: Explore payroll integration possibilities to reduce manual intervention.
Collaborate: Include all your relevant stakeholders to ensure commitment and buy in for a successful and valuable project.
Deloitte can assist companies with transitioning their payroll services both internally and externally. Corporate reorganisations and mergers & acquisition transactions can sometimes mean intra-company movements of employees, which can give rise to payroll complications and merging of payroll functions.
Payroll process reviews and if needed improvements are a pre-requisite to any decision regarding whether processing payroll is done in-house or outsourced. A review of requirements versus current processes can be very beneficial and can help ensure that payroll is processed correctly and on time.
Things to consider:
Pre-payroll processes.
How is your payroll data feeding to your payroll team/system?
In house payroll processing versus an outsourced payroll bureau.
Payroll compliance is ensuring that your business adheres to all payroll related legal regulations. This includes the processing of payroll and the filing of payroll related taxes. If you have employee’s, payroll compliance is one of the most important administrative tasks and if you are not compliant it can be extremely costly.
Additional reporting obligations will be introduced from 2024 (subject to commencement order), and will require employers to report details of the following tax-free payments or benefits made or provided to employees or directors:
Vouchers or benefits provided to an employee under the small benefit exemption (under which up to two tax-free vouchers or benefits with an aggregated value of not more than €1,000 (increased from €500) may be provided to an employee.
Remote working daily allowance – amounts of up to €3.20 per day to cover costs associated with working at home.
Amounts paid for work related travel and subsistence costs.
Revenue plans:
Revenue systems are being updated to facilitate the additional reporting requirements.
Revenue will be engaging with payroll software providers to ensure the payroll submissions that the software generates can include the additional items.
Later in 2023, Regulations are to be published and there is to be engagement with employers, payroll operators and tax agents.
The Code of Practice for Revenue Compliance Interventions is a set of guidelines for when Revenue is conducting compliance interventions. Revenue, taxpayers and tax practitioners must follow these guidelines. It covers all aspects of compliance.
Common reasons triggering potential audits:
Gross Pay less than Pay for Income Tax
Negative Gross Pay not processed correctly through system
Pay date before submission date
Out of date RPN
Potential root causes:
User (human) error/manual intervention
Pension contribution limits not calculation correctly through the software
Configuration of software package (not compliant with Irish real-time reporting regulations)
Ways to reduce risk:
Review your internal processes, automate and streamline where possible
Have a robust 4 eye review in place for payroll sign off
Use the Revenue window for amending payroll submissions if needed
Health checks/PAYE reviews can be a great way of ensuring all elements of payroll have been processed correctly and that all taxable expenses have been identified.
Deloitte can offer assistance with Revenue audits and tax due diligence.
Our team work globally with our Deloitte colleagues to provide payroll co-ordination. Working alongside our tax team, we also provide expat shadow payroll processing.
