What is a Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN)?

Since 1st January 2019, P2Cs have been discontinued by Revenue and instead have been replaced with the Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN).

The Revenue Payroll Notification is to be used by employers to ensure the most up to date Revenue information is being applied to their employees' pay. It will provide employers with the necessary information to deduct the correct income tax, Universal Social Charge (USC) and Local Property Tax (LPT) from each employee every pay period.

The data contained for each employee within an RPN will thus include:

• their tax credit.
  
  
• their Income Tax and Universal Social Charge (USC) cut-off points.
  
  
• Any previous pay, tax and USC deducted from 1 January (unless the certificate is on a week 1 or month 1 basis).
  
  
• Any Income Tax and USC exemptions.
  
  
• The amount of Local Property Tax (LPT) to be deducted, if applicable.
  
  

Since 1st January 2019, as part of the normal payroll process, employers first need to retrieve the latest RPN from Revenue for each of their employees in order to ensure the most up-to-date tax credits and cut off points are applied to their pay.

BrightPay facilitates the automatic retrieval of RPNs through the software from Revenue each pay period - guidance on this process can be found here.

Employment Identifier

The Employment Identifier is a field included on the Revenue Payroll Notification.

The Employment Identifier is unique for each separate employment for an employee and is used by Revenue to distinguish between:

• multiple employments for an employee with the same employer (dual employments)
  
  
• different periods of employments (where an employee ceases and re-commences employment with the same employer in the same year).

Please note: the setting of this Employment Identifier is automated in BrightPay where it is required.

Dual employment

A dual employment occurs if an employer:

• has an employee on their payroll with two active employments and
  
  
• want to keep the two sets of pay separate on their payroll records.

The Employment Identifier thus allows the ability to distinguish between the two employments when filing payroll submissions.

Continuous period of employment

The Employment Identifier that is given to an employee must remain the same for a continuous period of employment. It cannot be changed while the same employment is active. This applies even if the employment spans consecutive tax years.

Employment recommencement in the same tax year

An employee who ceases working for an employer and then recommences employment with the same employer again in the same tax year will be assigned a new Employment Identifier in order to distinguish between the two different periods of employment.

RPN Number

The RPN number is another field included on the Revenue Payroll Notification. This is applied by Revenue and tells the software if there has been an update to an employee’s credits etc. If an updated RPN is available, the RPN number for that employee will be incremented.

The RPN number for each employee is subsequently included in the periodic payroll submission to Revenue, so Revenue will know if the employer is using the latest RPN available for an employee or not.