Putting a cleaner, caretaker or housekeeper on the payroll: what PAYE means for an Irish holiday-let owner

Your Kerry cottage turns over every Saturday, and the woman who has cleaned it for two summers has asked to be paid properly: the same hours each week, your key, your linen, your method. That is no longer an invoice arrangement. The moment you agree to pay her as staff, you become an employer in Revenue's eyes.

Employer PRSI, and getting the money to Revenue

PRSI is where a holiday-let budget quietly moves. Revenue describes the PRSI contribution for a pay period as the employer's share plus the employee's. The employee's share comes out of her wage; the employer's share does not. It sits on top of the rate you agreed, and it is your cost per changeover. Each employee has a PRSI contribution class, which determines the rate; the classes and rates come from the Department of Social Protection, not Revenue, and we quote none here.

The start and the end of an employment

At the end, one date carries the weight. You include the date of leaving on the final payroll submission where an employee leaves, goes on a career break, or dies in your employment. It tells Revenue the person has stopped working for you, and means their next employer receives the correct information on the RPN. For casual staff, Revenue's guidance covers submitting a nil-pay payroll carrying the leaving date where someone has gone unpaid for three months, that date being the last day they actually worked.

Before your first wage run

• Settle the employment question first: employee and contractor carry different duties, and nothing here decides which yours is.
• Request the RPN before that first payment, and check whether your cleaner needs myAccount first.
• Price the employer's share of PRSI into your cleaning cost per changeover.
• Decide whether payroll software or ROS carries your submissions, and diarise the pay dates: every payment is a filing.
• Capture leaving dates on the final submission in the week they happen.

A late wage run costs more per day than a late rental return

What we do not tell you here: whether interest already charged can be remitted, and whether a phased payment arrangement is open to you. The manual's €500 line is a floor for entering such an arrangement, not a level below which interest is waived, and page 5 records that passages were withheld under the Freedom of Information Act 2014.

If you engage a contractor instead

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