Supporting evidence for missing PRSI contributions

R

RobinMx

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If you find missing contributions on your contribution statement, what kind of "supporting documentary evidence" can be offered?

I was thinking payslips for that year, but I doubt I can find all the paper statements from over a decade ago. The company has gone under since then.
Or maybe bank statements showing wages were paid in as usual, but I closed that account years ago.
I did find the P45 for that year and I think that's where the error happened: I changed job in November, and the November cessation date looks correct (on a Friday, starting the new job on the following Monday). However, the P45 only shows 39 insurable weeks, which would cover January to end of September. The notice period is still insurable, right? My contribution record for the other years shows no break even when my employer changed. There is no commencement date on the P45 because I was already working full-time for that company on January 1st, right until cessation in November.

I don't think I can prove anything if I accepted the P45 at the time, which I didn't know how to read then. I take it I should write off the 4 weeks of missing contributions as a lesson learnt going forward?
 
I’ve often wondered about this as I have about 40 PRSI contributions missing when I worked part-time aged 17.

I was paid in cash by a company that folded in 2001 so I have zero hope of ever proving anything.

Still does anyone have any examples of what kind of evidence DSP actually accepted or rejected?
 
A P60 should have been issued by the employer you were employed by on the 31st of December.
 
Good idea, I'll see if I can find the P60 for that year. However I suspect the total insurable weeks will still be missing the same 4 weeks, since the new company would have used the P45 I gave them as the basis for calculating the total number of insurable weeks for the year? (If I can't find it, that company is still in business though I'm not sure if they'll want/be able give me information relating to employment 15 years ago!)
 
Dr Strangelove said:
Still does anyone have any examples of what kind of evidence DSP actually accepted or rejected?
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I understand that they are happy to accept all available evidence but to be useful to them, it will obviously need to be both independent and convincing.

Trying to gather evidence concerning specific weeks worked in an employment decades ago for a company that itself is shut decades might be a tall order, but contemporaneous documents like diaries, copy rosters, even old CVs, might work in your favour.
 
Banks keep statements for many years- even long after an account was closed. I think they have to keep the records for 10 years. With the help of statements you could prove your case.
I managed to get a complete set of all transactions made from 2001 to 2011 from a foreign EU bank in 2022. The account had been closed 10 years before I came along to enquire about it in regards to an inheritance.
A research like that is quite costly- I had to fork out about Euro 900.
 
I'm not sure that I want to pay €900 to get those 4 missing credits! But this is useful information, thank you. I wasn't able to get my hands on the P60 for that year either.
This is really helpful, thank you. I'm going to gather the evidence I do have and send it to them, and we'll see. I'll report back here when I hear back.
 
My accounting firm fielded a query of this nature a few years ago from an ex-employee of a company we had done some work for, about 15 years earlier.

We had some archived records that confirmed that he did indeed work for them throughout that period and we confirmed this to the DSP for him.

It was enough to secure him the extra credits he needed to collect his pension.
 
RobinMx said:
I'm going to gather the evidence I do have and send it to them, and we'll see. I'll report back here when I hear back.
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To follow up: I sent the evidence I had on the weekend that followed this post. I did find old bank statements for that year. So, in addition to the other documentation mentioned in the thread, I sent them on with the regular deposits from the employer highlighted.

My query was acknowledged as received two weeks later. They are working through them in chronological order and I received confirmation that my record was updated with the missing contributions a couple of weeks ago. The online statement already shows the updated contributions, which is nice.
 
That's interesting @RobinMx - I have a similar situation but luckily I seem to have most or all of the payslips from the relevant period, although they just detail the employee PRSI deduction amount and not other details that I'm used to on payslips in more recent years. I also have statements of tax credits for the period that show that I worked for the company in question. I don't think that there was anything dodgy going on (e.g. employer not remitting PRSI deductions) - I think that the contributions somehow simply didn't carry over to my second job in the relevant tax year because they seem to have fallen off the P60 for that year. I'm hoping that the documentation that I have is sufficient for DSP to rectify the error.

Key Post - PRSI and planning retirement

On the subject of drawdowns, if regular income is taken as 417 per month (e5004 yr) when do the Class S 'stamps' get applied ? Drawdowns thru most of the year would be less than 5000 so no Class S would be awarded until the total reaches 5000. Is that right? And do any mix of drawdowns attract...
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I assume as well that they can see if you applied for any unemployment benefits during this time, if you didn't that is further potential evidence for your case.
 
It's your other post that reminded me to update this thread, ClubMan! I think with actual payslips at hand, you're in a very good position to get the issue rectified. Maybe it was a missing P45 that meant the new job didn't have the info about the previous one. I'd say, send as much information as you have in one go, since it can take so long to get a decision.
 
RobinMx said:
Maybe it was a missing P45 that meant the new job didn't have the info about the previous one. I'd say, send as much information as you have in one go, since it can take so long to get a decision.
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I never thought to check my stack of historical P45s!
Edit: oh - I guess that the P45s over the years were handed to the next employer so I don't actually have anything in that regard. However I did find a balancing statement for 2000/2001 which mentions both employers/employments. Another document to add to my "evidence pack".
 
Towger said:
A P60 should have been issued by the employer you were employed by on the 31st of December.
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Small pedantic note... prior to the short/9-month tax "year" in 2001 and the subsequent alignment of the tax with the calendar year from 2002 onwards, P60s were previously issued after the April 5th end of the tax year and not at/after the end of the calendar year.
 
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I have some missing prsi weeks from when I was in maternity leave years ago when I was on unpaid leave. Company submitted it a prsi class J rather than class A. Only found out last year when I got a statement of my PRSI credits. Still in same company so I asked them to rectify it but they were very unwilling. Months later they supplied all the paperwork I need from their archives. All I need to do next is submit it to the DSP. All those extra weeks will count at the end.
 
As we move to a TCA then it will become super important to keep track of things like this. And not just for maternity leave, but now there is a lot more leave available to fathers, some of which is unpaid as well but in theory can be credited...I doubt it is automatic? But maybe it is. I don't want to be arguing down the line with DSP, all payslips are electronic now so it might be even harder to track paperwork down with systems falling out of use etc.
 
I checked my record last year and noticed 2 anomalies. In 2016 for some reason, payroll made a mistake and I was credited with 48 instead of 52 contributions. This was an easy fix as I'm still in same job and had my P.60.

However, going back to 1995, I was missing a full year of contributions. I did not think i had much from that long ago. The DSP spent ages looking into it and came back and asked was I sick, did I travel, which I did not.They asked had I anything from that long ago.

What I did have was the job offer letter and start date for that job. Then I had the offer letter and start date for my next job. I left one job to go to the other. The missing year would have been when I had a full year employed by the first job, ie joined first year, paid 52 full weeks second (missing) year and then left mid way the third year to go to new job.

They seemed to be able to track it from there and eventually came back with the correction.

It was scary though that I could have been missing a full year of 52 contributions when I will be relying on total number of contributions.

I also think DSP should notify people annually.
 
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DSP have come back to me looking for additional supporting information even though I sent them almost everything that I have already...
An additional point of confusion seems to be that one of the companies that I worked for in 2000-2001 was known by one name at that time but later changed to another name - although the employer PPSN remained the same.
So DSP are asking me about the latter company even though it's the same company and the name in question was only adopted post 2000-2001.
Maybe that's simply because that's the last company name matching the employer PPSN that they can see or something.
I've sent them some additional stuff to try to explain this but it doesn't relate to the 2000-2001 tax year which is the one in question.
The company in question folded and/or was struck off at some point in the mid 2000s so there's nobody there to ask about this.
 
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