{"id":73327,"date":"2025-09-19T11:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73327\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:49:07","slug":"large-numbers-of-cross-border-public-workers-face-tax-headaches-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73327\/","title":{"rendered":"Large numbers of cross-Border public workers \u2018face tax headaches\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Large numbers of workers employed by public organisations on both sides of the Border but often working from home are in danger of falling foul of tax<\/a> rules that could cost them dearly, a conference has been told.<\/p>\n

Cross-Border public-sector employees avoid complications with tax, welfare and pensions if they physically travel to work across the Border under article 18 of the 1977 British-Irish double taxation treaty, tax expert Rose Tierney warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as soon as they start working from home, they\u2019re kicked out of article 18,\u201d Ms Tierney told the Centre for Cross-Border Co-Operation conference in the Ballymascanlon Hotel in Co Louth.<\/p>\n

A significant number of jobs in local authorities, colleges, the Civil Service or quasi-government bodies are now filled by cross-Border workers, mostly, but not entirely, by people from Northern Ireland employed by organisations in the Republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome are on very high-level salaries. Some have begun to realise that they have issues, saying, \u2018Oh, God. We\u2019re in a trap here. We didn\u2019t realise this. We didn\u2019t realise we had responsibilities. What should our employer have been doing?\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was happening is they were getting bad advice. They weren\u2019t necessarily following what [they] should have been doing or realising the risks of what they were doing.\u201d <\/p>\n

For example, cross-Border workers paying tax in one jurisdiction do not get pension<\/a> tax relief if they work for an employer on the other side of the Border and make the pension contributions on the other side of the Border. <\/p>\n

Many people from Northern Ireland<\/a> have taken high-paying jobs in the Republic in recent years because of worker shortages south of the Border, she said. \u201cA lot of these people thought they were going to get a big lift to bump up their pensions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, they\u2019ll get [tax relief] south of the Border, but when they go to file that on self-assessment basis north of the Border, they don\u2019t get that relief. So basically, they\u2019re getting relief on one side and handing it to HMRC on the other. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd vice versa, it\u2019s the other way around as well if people go in the opposite direction. There\u2019s no tax relief on those pension contributions if you\u2019re a cross-border worker,\u201d said Ms Tierney, who runs TierneyTax.<\/p>\n

A bilateral agreement between Ireland and the UK is possible and the European Union has already said it would accept such an agreement: \u201cWe don\u2019t have to wait for the EU or the OECD to say what we can or can\u2019t do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, companies on both sides of the Border are now increasingly using IT filters to reject cross-Border job applications because of the difficulties employers face in dealing with two systems, Ibec<\/a> has warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have lots of members coming to us to say that they will no longer hire cross-Border. That for me is an absolute travesty,\u201d Ibec executive Fergal O\u2019Brien told the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will hire in some exceptional cases, if there\u2019s a skill that they cannot get anywhere well. But a large proportion of them are now saying no. If they have an alternative, they won\u2019t hire cross-Border,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

An all-island agreement to cover taxation, pension, banking and welfare issues facing cross-Border workers must be urgently agreed, a series of speakers told the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can\u2019t provide all-island mobility within that evolving and changing workforce, then we\u2019re really missing the trick. The opportunity is stronger than ever because the world of work is changing, but there are very significant obstacles,\u201d Mr O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Large numbers of workers employed by public organisations on both sides of the Border but often working from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,23935,18,18470,19,17,954,2987,1900,4520],"class_list":{"0":"post-73327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-common-ground","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ibec","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-pension","16":"tag-revenue-commissioners","17":"tag-tax"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}