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Irish Tax & Salary Guides
The guides here cover the parts of an Irish payslip that a calculator cannot explain on its own. Three deal with the deductions themselves: PAYE and how the standard rate cut-off point works, USC with its own set of bands, and PRSI with its class system and thresholds. Two deal with what reduces the bill: tax credits, which are the main lever most employees never adjust, and pension relief, which is the only deduction that reduces taxable pay rather than the tax on it. The last three deal with situations rather than rules: emergency tax and how to end it, a first job in Ireland, and the three ways a married couple can be assessed. Each names its Revenue source. None of them recommends a product, and each says what it does not cover.
Your take-home pay
Take-home per month
€3,304
| Income tax per year | €7,200 |
| USC per year | €1,033 |
| PRSI per year | €2,119 |
Plain-English guides to every deduction on your Irish payslip. Written for the 2026 tax year using the latest Revenue rates and thresholds.
PAYE Tax in Ireland
How PAYE works, the 2026 rates and bands, standard rate cut-off points, and how tax credits reduce your bill.
Read guide →USC (Universal Social Charge)
USC rates, thresholds, exemptions, and how this charge differs from income tax for Irish workers.
Read guide →PRSI in Ireland
PRSI classes, contribution rates, the benefits you earn, and how the tapered credit works for low earners.
Read guide →Tax Credits in Ireland 2026
A complete guide to Personal, Employee, Single Parent, Home Carer, Rent, and other tax credits available.
Read guide →Emergency Tax in Ireland
Why emergency tax happens, how much extra you pay, and step-by-step instructions to claim a refund.
Read guide →Married Couples Tax
Single vs joint assessment, transferring tax bands, and how to optimise your tax as a married couple.
Read guide →Pension Contributions & Tax Relief
How pension contributions reduce your tax, age-related limits, and the difference between 20% and 40% relief.
Read guide →Starting Your First Job in Ireland
Tax registration with Revenue, getting your PPS number, understanding your first payslip, and avoiding emergency tax.
Read guide →Social welfare and buying a home
- Social welfare: Every weekly rate for 2026 in one table, with a calculator for each payment.
- Jobseeker's Benefit: Pay-related rate after a lay-off, graduated rate for part-time weeks, and how long each lasts.
- Jobseeker's Allowance: The means test step by step: part-time pay, a partner’s earnings, savings and children.
- Illness Benefit: Weekly rate by 2024 earnings, partner and child increases, waiting days and the one- or two-year limit.
- Maternity Benefit: Maternity, Paternity and Parent’s Benefit: the weekly rate, the Illness Benefit top-up and the weeks paid.
- Working Family Payment: Income limits by family size from January 2026, the 60 % rule and a calculator from gross pay.
- Carer's Allowance: Rates by age and number of people cared for, the new income disregard and the €2.50 means steps.
- State Pension: The 2026 rate from your contribution record: Total Contributions Approach, the yearly average blend and deferral to 70.
- Stamp Duty: Residential Stamp Duty band by band, with VAT taken out of a new-build price as Revenue requires.
- Help to Buy: The refund on a first new home: the €30,000 cap, 10 % of the price and four years of tax.
These guides are for someone looking at an Irish payslip and trying to work out why it says what it says. Each covers one part of the system, names the Revenue publication it relies on, and carries its review date at the top and bottom so that a figure can be checked against the year it belongs to.
Read them in the order the question arises. The PAYE guide comes first, because credits and the standard rate cut-off point determine everything else. If you have just started a job, the emergency tax guide is the more urgent one: it explains why the first payslip is smaller than expected and exactly what to do about it, usually within a single pay cycle.
The USC and PRSI guides matter because neither charge behaves like income tax. Both are calculated on gross pay, neither is reduced by tax credits, and PRSI has no upper ceiling at all, which is why the combined marginal rate stays just above fifty-two percent however high the salary goes. Understanding that explains most of the gap between a headline salary and what arrives in the account.
The remaining guides deal with situations rather than mechanics: pension relief and its age-related limits, the choice of assessment method for married couples, and the credits that have to be claimed rather than granted. That last point is where most money is left unclaimed, and claims can be backdated four years.