Query re: relief for tax saver travel passes

Hi guys,

Another quick one. I was just wondering if you were to earn enough money to barely get into the 41% tax paying bracket, e.g. say you earned 37,000pa would you get 41% relief on a bus pass for a year for whatever it cost, say €500?

Many thanks in advance and keep up the good work posters!

The cost of the ticket is deducted from your salary before tax is applied, reducing your taxable salary. If only €400 of your salary is currently taxed at 41%, you'd only get partial relief at 41% when deducting a ticket cost of €500. At least in that situation you are well under the annual PRSI threshold, so you will also get further PRSI / health levy relief (probably 6%, depending on your PRSI class.).

You should also take into account that travel passes etc are to be deducted after the 'Emergency' Levy is applied.

Yes, I was going to mention that but decided not to in case it would confuse things. The levy doesn't really affect deciding to avail / not avail of the travel pass, since you can't avoid it either way (though I suspect the levies are not easily implementable as first conceived and may actually be eligible for some reliefs.).