Tax Relief on PRSA

[Ballina]

Hello, I took out a PRSA in 2003 and I was working paying A Class Contributions, Five years later I changed jobs and started paying Superannuation in addition to A Class PRSI. I have never gotten Tax Relief on my PRSA Contributions, even though I included it in my Return of Income form. I even wrote to the Tax Office asking could I get Tax Relief and got no reply. That was about 5 years ago. I was under the impression when I took it about that I would get relief on the contributions. I have now been retired on ill health grounds and would like to know where I stand as I will still be contributing until I`m 65. I`m 60 now.

 

[LDFerguson]

If you were in non-pensionable employment for the first five years of your PRSA - i.e. not in a pension scheme in that job - then you should have been entitled to tax relief on your contributions for those five years.

When you joined the superannuation scheme, your PRSA contributions would no longer have been eligible for tax relief as you were in another pension scheme. At that time, your pension advisor should have advised you to replace your PRSA contributions with AVC PRSA contributions and you would then have been eligible to claim tax relief on them, subject to certain limits. I don't know if you could do that now, retrospectively. No harm in asking.

If you can show that you included your PRSA contributions in your return of income since 2003, then I think you should query this with Revenue - why you didn't receive tax relief for the first five years.