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Revenue Payroll Audits Ireland

You forward the letter to us. We handle everything from there.

A Revenue payroll audit is a formal examination of your payroll records, tax filings, and employer compliance. They are triggered by discrepancies in PSR data, missing ERR submissions, BIK anomalies, or as part of Revenue's ongoing random audit programme. They are time-consuming, stressful, and — without proper records — expensive. The best preparation is a payroll that was run correctly to begin with.

What is a Revenue payroll audit? What to expect.

Revenue conducts payroll audits to verify that employers are correctly operating PAYE, deducting and remitting PRSI and USC, reporting BIK and expenses accurately, and complying with all real-time reporting obligations. Audits can be triggered by a specific query, a discrepancy between your PSR submissions and other Revenue data, or as part of a routine compliance check.

During a payroll audit, Revenue will typically request payroll records, payslips, BIK calculations, and expense records. Revenue can generally look back 4 years, though this can extend to 10 years in cases of fraud or neglect.

What Irish employers are required to do

  • Maintain full payroll records for a minimum of 6 years
  • Keep documentation of BIK valuations, car mileage records, and the basis for each calculation

If Revenue contacts you about your payroll, forward the correspondence to CBCR immediately. We will help prepare the response, gather the required documentation, and support you through the process. Note that the employer remains ultimately responsible for responding to Revenue — CBCR acts as your expert support, not as your legal representative. For clients whose payroll CBCR manages, we maintain a full audit trail of every submission, every BIK calculation, and every ERR report. So a Revenue audit is a process, not a crisis.

We also conduct pre-audit reviews for businesses that want to check their compliance position before Revenue does.

Not sure if you're compliant?

Book a free Payroll Health Check — 30 minutes, no obligation. We review this and every other compliance area — and tell you exactly where you stand. No obligation.

Frequently asked questions

Revenue selects businesses for audit through a combination of risk profiling and random selection. Risk profiling may flag discrepancies in PSR data, BIK valuation issues, PRSI classification issues, or other indicators. Random selection means any employer can be selected regardless of their compliance record.
Revenue can generally look back 4 years for routine audits. Where Revenue believes there has been fraud or neglect, this can extend to 10 years. Maintaining complete payroll records for a minimum of 6 years is essential good practice.
Do not ignore it. Note the deadline for response, gather the documentation listed, and — if you use an outsourced payroll provider — forward the letter to them immediately. CBCR handles Revenue correspondence on behalf of all managed payroll clients.
Yes. Revenue operates a Qualifying Disclosure regime where voluntary disclosure of errors before an audit is notified attracts significantly lower penalties than errors discovered during audit. If you think there may be issues in your payroll records, contact us before Revenue does.
Outcomes range from a letter of clearance (no issues found) to a settlement agreement involving repayment of underpaid taxes, interest, and penalties. The size of the settlement depends on the nature and scale of the errors, whether they were voluntary disclosed, and the quality of records maintained.

Official Revenue & Government resources

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