Employment Permits

No PPS Number, No Payroll: What Employers Must Do Before an Overseas Hire's First Payday

Updated 14 August 2026  ·  10 min read  ·  By Monette, Founder of CA Recruitment

Your permit came through. The visa followed. Your new hire has landed, passed induction and is on the roster for next week. Then payroll asks for their PPS number, and nobody has one — so the first payslip of a job you spent six months filling shows 40% tax and no credits.

This is the step that gets missed because it does not look like an immigration task. It is a Revenue and Department of Social Protection task that lands squarely on payroll, in week one, when everyone involved is busy with something else.

Correct as of 14 August 2026. Tax rates, rate bands, USC rates and the PPS Number application process change — the emergency USC rate and the standard rate band are set annually in the Budget. Get in touch and we will confirm the current position for your hire before their start date.

The short answer

A Personal Public Service (PPS) Number is the reference number that lets Revenue identify your employee. Without it you cannot get a Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN) for them, and without an RPN you are legally required to operate emergency tax.

Three facts decide how much this costs you:

Get those three moving in week one and the worker is on a correct tax basis inside a month. Leave them and you are explaining a 40% deduction to someone who has just moved continents for the job.

Why this lands on you, not immigration

Three separate documents come out of an overseas hire, and they belong to three different bodies:

  1. The employment permit — the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. Your application, before travel.
  2. The IRP card — Immigration Service Delivery, after arrival. Registration is the worker's application, and it happens in Dublin.
  3. The PPS Number — the Department of Social Protection, after arrival. The worker's application, but the consequence of not having it is entirely yours.

The PPSN is the odd one out. It has no immigration function at all — a PPS number says nothing about anyone's right to work, which is exactly why it can never substitute for a permit in your right-to-work file. It exists so that Revenue and the social welfare system can identify a person. And because it sits outside the permit process, it falls into the gap between whoever manages your permits and whoever runs your payroll.

That gap has a price, and it is charged weekly.

What emergency tax actually costs

Revenue's rule is simple: employers must operate emergency tax when no Revenue Payroll Notification is available. You will not receive an RPN if the employee has no PPSN, or if the employee is not registered with Revenue for PAYE.

What happens next depends on whether you have a PPSN in hand.

Where the employee has given you no PPSN, you must tax all of their pay at the higher rate of 40%, with no tax credits, from the very first payslip. Revenue's own worked example: an employee earning €800 a week with no PPSN pays €320 in tax in week one.

Where the employee has given you a PPSN but the job is not yet registered, the position is softer for the first four weeks of the employment — weeks one to four counted from their start date, not from the day the number reached you. You give them the single person's weekly rate band — €846.16, which is one fifty-second of the €44,000 single standard rate band that applies for 2026. Pay up to that limit is taxed at 20%, anything above it at 40%. From week 5 onwards, all of their pay is taxed at 40%.

On top of either scenario, the emergency rate of USC is a flat 8% in 2026, applied to all income.

Two details make this worse than it first looks.

Emergency tax runs on the calendar, not on shifts worked. Revenue counts every week from the date the employee started with you, whether or not they worked that week. A worker who starts, does a fortnight of induction and then waits on a rota is still hitting week 5 on schedule.

Handing over the PPSN is not the finish line. It moves you from the no-PPSN rules to the four-week rate band — but it does not start a fresh clock. Those four weeks are weeks one to four of the employment, counted from their start date, so a PPSN that reaches payroll in week two buys two weeks and one that reaches you in week six buys nothing at all. The job still has to be registered with Revenue before an RPN exists.

For a General Employment Permit hire on a salary in the low-to-mid thirties, a month on the emergency basis is a meaningful chunk of take-home pay for someone who has just paid for flights, a rental deposit and a €300 immigration registration fee. It is refundable, but the refund arrives weeks later. The goodwill does not always come back with it.

They cannot apply before they arrive

The instinct of any organised employer is to get the paperwork done in advance. That does not work here, and knowing why saves you building a plan around something that cannot happen.

To apply online through MyWelfare, gov.ie's list of conditions is short: be living in Ireland, be at least 18 years of age, and hold at least a basic MyGovID account. There is a separate route for people living outside Ireland who need a PPSN to deal with an Irish state agency — a beneficiary under an Irish will, for instance — but it is not a way in early. Citizens Information is direct about that: you cannot apply for a PPS number if you intend to relocate to Ireland, and must wait until you are in the country.

So the earliest realistic start is the day after arrival. That is precisely why it belongs in your arrival plan and not in a to-do list someone gets to in month two.

One thing you can prepare in advance: the address. Proof of an Irish address is a mandatory part of the application and it must be less than three months old — which is a genuine problem for a person who landed last week and has no utility bill, no bank statement and no lease in their own name. This is the single most common reason a PPSN application stalls.

If you provide or arrange the accommodation, as many employers in farming, care and construction do, you are the fix. The accepted evidence includes an official confirmation of address by a third party — Citizens Information gives accommodation or property owners and hostel or hotel managers as examples. Where the worker is staying with someone else, an original household bill plus a short note from the bill holder confirming they live at that address is accepted, and that note can be written on the bill itself.

Draft the letter before they land. It costs you five minutes and removes the most likely delay.

You can apply on their behalf

This is the part almost nobody tells employers, and it is written plainly on the gov.ie service page: third party applications — for example made by a solicitor, accountant, or employer on behalf of the person who needs a PPS Number — can be sent by email or post.

Completed forms go to [email protected], or by post to Department of Social Protection, Shannon Lodge, Carrick on Shannon, Co. Leitrim, N41 KD81.

What you send:

Two boundaries to be honest about. First, the third-party route is a filing mechanism, not a shortcut past identity checks: applications made online through MyWelfare include an in-person appointment at a PPS Number Allocation Centre, and Citizens Information states that appointment must be attended for the application to complete. Do not promise your worker that going through you means they never have to attend anything.

Second, the consent form matters. Without it the Department has no basis to give the number to you, and you will have done the paperwork for a number you cannot use on payroll.

The good news on the appointment: unlike immigration registration, which now runs through a single office in Dublin, PPS Number Allocation Centres are spread around the country. Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Letterkenny, Tralee, Castlebar, Dundalk, Athlone and most other county towns have one. For a worker based outside Dublin, that is a half-day rather than the full day the IRP appointment costs them.

The documents — and the two you supply

Every PPS Number application, whoever submits it, has to satisfy three requirements. Here is where each one comes from.

Evidence of identity — the worker's. For a non-EU/EEA citizen, gov.ie lists a current passport or a 1951 travel document. Note what is not on that list: the IRP card. gov.ie does not name the IRP as a requirement for a PPSN, so do not assume your hire must wait for their card to arrive before starting. Other documents may help confirm identity if available, and gov.ie specifically mentions evidence from Revenue of employment among them.

Evidence of address — usually yours. Name, address, less than three months old. A household utility bill, an official letter or document, a bank statement, a property lease or tenancy agreement, or an official confirmation of address by a third party. A worker three days off a flight has none of the first four in their own name. Your letter is the practical answer.

Evidence of why they need it — also yours. Taking up employment is a listed reason. The signed contract or a letter on headed paper confirming the role and start date does the job. Worth knowing if you hire in construction: gov.ie separately lists completing Safe Pass training as a reason a PPS Number is needed, so on a site-based hire the PPSN gates more than payroll.

The step employers cannot do for them

Here is the trap that catches employers who have done everything else right.

Your new hire has their PPS number. They have given it to you. You still cannot download an RPN, because the job is not registered with Revenue — and Revenue is explicit that an employer cannot register a first employment in the State on the employee's behalf.

The employee has to do it. The sequence is:

  1. They register for Revenue's myAccount, which requires a PPSN — so this genuinely cannot be done first.
  2. In myAccount, under PAYE Services, they select Add Job or Pension Details.
  3. They enter their employer's Tax Registration Number, the start date of the job, and how often they are paid.

Read step 3 again, because it is the one that sits with you. Your new employee cannot register their job without your Tax Registration Number, and they have no way of knowing it unless you tell them. A worker who has just arrived in the country, is navigating a government portal in their second or third language, and does not know the number they are being asked for will simply stop — and stay on emergency tax while they do.

Put the employer Tax Registration Number in the onboarding pack, in writing, alongside the start date. It is one line of text, and it saves more emergency tax than anything else on this page.

Once the job is registered and the PPSN is with you, the RPN becomes available, emergency tax stops, and Revenue's guidance is that you refund the over-deducted Income Tax and USC through payroll once a cumulative RPN issues. Flag that to whoever runs payroll so the refund is not missed.

A week-one plan that avoids the problem

None of this is difficult. It fails because it is nobody's job. Assign it, and the whole thing takes about an hour of employer time.

Before they land

Week one

Weeks two to four

Run in parallel with immigration registration, which has its own appointment and its own fee, and the first month of an overseas hire is a genuinely busy administrative period. Employers who plan it as part of the placement barely notice. Employers who treat the permit as the finish line find out about it on payday.

Frequently asked questions

Can my new overseas hire get a PPS number before they arrive in Ireland? No. gov.ie's PPS Number Allocation Centres page is explicit that to apply online you must be living in Ireland and be at least 18 years of age. The service page adds that MyWelfare is open to customers resident on the island of Ireland and customers resident abroad — but that abroad route is for people who need a PPS Number to deal with an Irish state agency, such as a beneficiary under an Irish will. Citizens Information closes off the rest: you cannot apply for a PPS number if you intend to relocate to Ireland, and must wait until you are in the country. Plan for the application to start after they land.

Can I apply for a PPS number on behalf of my employee? Yes. gov.ie explicitly allows third-party applications made by a solicitor, accountant or employer on behalf of the person who needs the PPS Number. Completed forms are emailed to [email protected] or posted to the Department of Social Protection, Shannon Lodge, Carrick on Shannon, Co. Leitrim, N41 KD81. You will need the REG1 application form, the signed third-party consent form and the PPS Number questionnaire.

What happens on payroll if my employee has no PPS number yet? You must operate emergency tax, because Revenue will not issue a Revenue Payroll Notification without a PPSN. Where the employee has not given you a PPSN, Revenue requires you to tax all of their pay at the higher rate of 40% with no tax credits, from the first payslip. The emergency rate of USC, 8% in 2026, applies on top.

Does my employee need their IRP card before they can apply for a PPS number? gov.ie lists a current passport (or a 1951 travel document) as the identity evidence for a non-EU/EEA citizen — it does not list the IRP card as a requirement. In practice the harder document is proof of an Irish address, which must show the worker's name and be less than three months old. If you provide accommodation, a written confirmation of address from you is an accepted form of proof.

Can I register my new employee's first Irish job with Revenue for them? No, and this is where a lot of avoidable emergency tax comes from. Revenue is explicit that an employer cannot register a first employment in the State on the employee's behalf. The employee registers the job themselves through Revenue's myAccount, using your employer Tax Registration Number, the start date and their pay frequency. Give them that Tax Registration Number in writing on day one.

Will my employee get the overpaid emergency tax back? Yes, and it usually comes back through your payroll rather than from Revenue directly. Once the job is registered and you can download a cumulative Revenue Payroll Notification, Revenue's guidance is that the employer refunds any Income Tax and USC that was over-deducted. That refund is a payroll task for you, so make sure whoever runs payroll knows it is coming.

Is there a PPS number appointment, and where does my worker go? Yes. Applications made online through MyWelfare include an in-person appointment at a PPS Number Allocation Centre, which Citizens Information states must be attended to complete the application. Unlike immigration registration, which is Dublin-only, the allocation centres are spread across the counties — Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Letterkenny, Tralee and most other county towns all have one. Budget a half-day, not a day trip.

Where CA Recruitment fits

We place workers from the Philippines with Irish employers in agriculture, construction, healthcare, hospitality and care, and we manage the employment permit process end to end. The arrival steps — PPS Number, immigration registration, getting a new employee onto payroll correctly — are planned into the placement rather than handed over at the airport, because a worker on emergency tax in their first month is a retention problem before it is an admin one.

If you are hiring from outside the EEA and want the first month mapped out before you commit, get in touch and we will walk you through the sequence for your specific role. Our full work permit guide covers the permit stage that comes before all of this.

Sources: Department of Social Protection, Get a Personal Public Service (PPS) Number (last updated 30 January 2026) and PPS Number Allocation Centres by County; Revenue, Emergency basis, Emergency Tax rules, How to stop paying Emergency Tax and Tax rates, bands and reliefs; Citizens Information, Personal Public Service (PPS) number.