Irish Tax Return Deadlines: Pay and File Dates for 2026 and 2027

Every Irish business owner has their own set of dates. A sole trader in Limerick worries about 31 October. A company director is watching an Annual Return Date that nobody outside the company would guess. A publican with bi-monthly VAT is thinking about the 23rd. This calendar pulls the main filing and payment dates into one place for SMEs, company directors, employers, sole traders and anyone with non-PAYE income.

We review this page every September, and the current review is dated 19 September 2026. One caveat before you screenshot the table: Revenue normally confirms the extended ROS Pay and File date only a few months before the deadline, so the 2027 online extension is not yet announced. Anything unconfirmed is labelled provisional below, and we would rather say “not yet known” than guess.

What are the main Irish tax deadlines for 2026 and 2027?

The table covers recurring rules first (these repeat every month or every two months), then fixed calendar dates in order. Deadlines tied to your accounting period, your Annual Return Date or a specific transaction cannot be printed as a single date, so those rows give you the rule instead.

Two things to note on penalties. The late filing surcharge is a percentage of the full liability for the year, not of the amount still outstanding, so filing late can cost you even if you paid on time. Interest runs daily from the original due date at 0.0219% for income tax, corporation tax and CGT, and 0.0274% for VAT and PAYE.

Which income tax deadlines apply to sole traders and self-employed people?

The paper deadline is the one most people know. Revenue confirms that the Pay and File deadline for the 2025 Form 11 is Saturday 31 October 2026, and three separate things land on it: your 2025 return, the balancing payment for 2025, and preliminary tax for 2026. Form 11 is the self-assessment return for sole traders, contractors, farmers and proprietary directors. If you are taxed under PAYE with a modest amount of extra income, you may be in Form 12 or myAccount territory instead, which is a lighter process with a different deadline path.

The online route buys you time. The ROS deadline for the 2025 return is Wednesday 18 November 2026. The catch is that it is an all-or-nothing concession: file on ROS but pay by cheque, or pay on ROS but post the return, and you fall back to 31 October. Miss that and a surcharge of 5% of the tax due applies, capped at €12,695, rising to 10% capped at €63,485 once you are more than two months late. Unpaid tax also attracts daily interest, and a pattern of late tax returns tends to attract Revenue’s attention in ways nobody enjoys.

Uploading a return is not the same as filing one. Before you close the laptop:

• Sign and submit the Form 11 on ROS, then download the acknowledgement receipt
• Make the payment as a separate step; ROS does not take it automatically
• Check your ROS Inbox for the notice of assessment and the payment confirmation
• Keep the receipt with your records for the year

When do company tax and CRO deadlines fall?

Corporation tax works off your accounting period, not the calendar. Revenue requires the CT1 and any balancing payment nine months after the period ends, on or before the 23rd of that ninth month. So a 31 December 2025 year end means 23 September 2026, and a 31 December 2026 year end means 23 September 2027. File late and you face the same 5% and 10% surcharges described above, daily interest, and restrictions on loss relief, group relief and capital allowances. That last one bites hardest, because a restricted loss claim can cost far more than the surcharge itself.

Preliminary corporation tax is a separate payment on a separate date. A small company, meaning one whose corporation tax liability in the previous accounting period was €200,000 or less, pays preliminary tax in one instalment 31 days before the period ends, and before the 23rd of that month. For a 31 December year end that is 23 November. Large companies pay in two instalments on a different timetable, which is worth knowing only so you do not apply the wrong rule to your own limited company.

Then there is the CRO, which runs on its own clock entirely. The annual return on Form B1 is due no later than 56 days after your company’s Annual Return Date, filed electronically on CORE with financial statements attached. The first annual return is the exception: it is made up to the date six months after incorporation and needs no financial statements. Late filing is expensive:

• €100 late fee from the day after the deadline, plus €3 per day, up to €1,200 per return
• Loss of audit exemption for the following two financial years
• Under the Companies (Corporate Governance, Enforcement and Regulatory Provisions) Act 2024, no audit exemption at all if you file late more than once in five years
• Possible prosecution of the company and directors, or involuntary strike-off

Diarising your ARD is the single cheapest piece of company secretarial housekeeping there is.

When are VAT3 and monthly PAYE returns due?

Most businesses file VAT3 returns on a two-month cycle. Revenue requires the return and payment by the 19th day of the month following the end of each period, extended to the 23rd for customers who file and pay on ROS. So March covers January and February, May covers March and April, July covers May and June, September covers July and August, November covers September and October, and the following January covers November and December. Revenue can assign a different period: monthly for repayment traders, four-monthly or six-monthly where annual liability is low, or annual returns by arrangement.

There is no percentage late-filing surcharge on a VAT3 the way there is on a Form 11. Instead you get daily interest at 0.0274%, fixed and tax-geared penalties, and eventually collection action or an estimate raised against you. Which leads to the most useful rule in this whole article: file the return even when you cannot pay it. A filed return with a payment arrangement is a manageable problem. An unfiled return is an estimate, and estimates are rarely in your favour. Our VAT services team spends a fair share of its time unwinding exactly that situation.

PAYE runs monthly and in real time. You submit payroll on or before each pay date, Revenue builds a monthly statement from those submissions, and that statement becomes your statutory return on the 14th of the following month if you have not accepted or amended it. Payment is due within 14 days of month end, or 23 days if you file and pay through ROS. The liability covers income tax, USC, employee and employer PRSI, and Local Property Tax deducted at source. Incorrect payroll submissions carry interest and penalties, so correct them promptly rather than waiting for the year to end. Getting payroll right each month is genuinely easier than fixing twelve months of it in one go.

When are RTSO and Capital Gains Tax due?

Relevant Tax on a Share Option has no annual date. Where it applies, the Form RTSO1 and the payment are due within 30 days of exercising the option, counting the exercise date itself. Worth knowing: for gains realised on or after 1 January 2024, the employer remits the tax through payroll instead, so the 30-day RTSO1 route now mainly concerns earlier exercises and historic liabilities. Late RTSO attracts interest at 0.0219% per day.

CGT payment dates are fixed and generous at one end of the year, tight at the other. Gains on disposals between 1 January and 30 November are payable by 15 December of the same year, and gains on December disposals are payable by 31 January of the following year. In practice: 15 December 2026, then 31 January 2027, then 15 December 2027, then 31 January 2028. Interest runs daily on anything paid late.

The return is a separate obligation with a separate date. You file the CGT return by 31 October of the year after disposal, through your Form 11 if you are self-assessed, or on Form CG1 if you do not normally file an annual return. A 2026 disposal is therefore paid in December 2026 or January 2027 and reported by 31 October 2027. And no, a nil liability does not always let you off: if you claimed a relief or exemption to get to nil, the disposal still needs to be reported. Paying in December does not close the file.

Frequently asked questions

When is preliminary income tax due, and which tax year does each payment cover?

Preliminary tax is paid towards the current year, while the balancing payment settles the previous year. Both fall on the same Pay and File date, which is why the October bill often feels larger than expected. Revenue accepts three calculation methods:

• 90% of your final liability for the current tax year
• 100% of your final liability for the previous tax year
• 105% of the pre-preceding year, available only to monthly direct debit payers, and not where that year’s liability was nil

Do Irish tax deadlines move when they fall on a weekend or public holiday?

Not automatically, and the two agencies differ. Revenue named 31 October 2026 as the Pay and File deadline even though it is a Saturday, so treat statutory Revenue dates as fixed. The CRO takes the opposite approach: where the 56-day filing period expires on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, it extends to the next working day. Check each affected date rather than assuming a weekend buys you until Monday.

Which online filing extensions for 2026 and 2027 have been officially confirmed?

As of this September 2026 review, Revenue has confirmed Wednesday 18 November 2026 as the extended ROS date for the 2025 Form 11. The equivalent 2027 date, covering the 2026 return, has not been announced. Revenue typically confirms it by eBrief in the middle of the year, so expect it around mid-2027. We will not predict it from previous years, because the date has moved before.

What should I do before my next filing date?

Start with the short version: work out which of these dates actually apply to you, put them in your calendar with a reminder two weeks out, and begin reconciling records well before the due date rather than the night before. Bank reconciliations, stock counts and mileage logs are all much easier in October than in a panic in mid-November.

If you have already missed something, the instinct to wait until you can pay in full is the wrong one. File the return now to stop the surcharge climbing, then talk to Revenue about a phased payment arrangement, or to the CRO about your options if the annual return has slipped. The gap between “late and engaged” and “late and silent” is enormous.

If you would rather someone else kept the calendar, that is what we do. Whether you need your preliminary tax calculated properly, a ROS filing handled, an overdue return corrected or simply a second opinion on which dates apply to your business, talk to our team in Limerick and we will map the year ahead with you.

The information in this blog is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute accounting, tax, business, or legal advice. While Coffey & Co aims to ensure the content is accurate and up to date, no guarantee is given regarding its completeness or suitability for any particular purpose.