Emergency tax: why it happens, what it costs and how to fix it

Guide · Updated 27 August 2026 · About 5 minutes

Starting a new job and finding that far more tax has been deducted than expected is almost always emergency tax. It is not a penalty and it is not permanent, but it will not correct itself either — and the longer it runs, the longer you are without money that is yours. This guide explains the trigger, the cost and the fix.

1. What emergency tax is

Your employer cannot guess your tax position. They apply the instruction Revenue sends them, called a Revenue Payroll Notification, which sets out your tax credits, your standard rate cut-off point and the basis to use.

When no notification is available for an employment, payroll has no lawful alternative to the emergency basis: a default set of rules that deliberately errs on the side of over-deducting, so that you are never left with an unexpected bill at year end. The consequence is that you are paid less than you should be until the notification arrives.

2. Why it happens

Two situations account for nearly all cases:

• The employment has not been registered with Revenue. Your employer has reported the job, but you have not added it in myAccount, so Revenue has no credits to allocate to it. This is by far the most common cause and it affects people who have worked in Ireland for years.
• Revenue has no PPS number for you. Without one the employment cannot be registered at all, and the harshest version of the emergency basis applies immediately.

It also shows up after less obvious events: returning to work after time abroad, moving from self-employment to PAYE, starting a second job, or being re-hired by a former employer under a new employment record.

3. What it costs

The emergency basis works roughly as follows, and the detail depends on whether Revenue holds your PPS number:

4. How to fix it, step by step

The fix is yours to make, not your employer's. They can only apply what Revenue sends them.

1. Find your employer's registered number. It is printed on your payslip, or payroll will give it to you.
2. Sign in to Revenue myAccount at revenue.ie. If you have never registered, do that first — verification can take a few days, so start immediately.
3. Open "Update job or pension details" and add your new employment using the employer registered number and your start date.
4. Cease any employment you have left. If an old job still shows as active it may be holding credits and rate band that your new employer cannot use.
5. Allocate your credits and rate band to the correct employment. If you have two active jobs, decide how to split them.
6. Tell payroll you have registered. They cannot act on your word alone, but they can confirm when the notification arrives and make sure it is applied in the next run rather than the one after.

If you do not yet have a PPS number, apply to the Department of Social Protection through MyWelfare before anything else, since nothing can be registered without it.

5. Getting your money back

Once the correct notification is in place, PAYE returns to the cumulative basis. Your employer recalculates the tax due on your pay for the year to date, compares it against what has already been deducted, and refunds the difference through payroll — usually as a visibly larger net payment in the next payslip.

If the tax year has already ended, the refund comes from Revenue instead. Request a Statement of Liability for the relevant year in myAccount; the overpayment is paid directly to your bank account. You can request statements for the four previous years, so an old overpayment is not lost.

6. Avoiding it next time

• Register the job the week you accept it, not the week of your first payslip. Registration before the first pay run generally avoids the emergency basis entirely.
• Cease old employments promptly so your credits are not stranded.
• Keep myAccount access working. Recovering a lost login is the slowest step in the whole process.
• Check the tax basis on your first payslip. Anything other than cumulative deserves a query straight away.

Frequently asked questions