Ireland · VAT & accounting
Accounting software for Irish businesses
HelloBooks computes your VAT3 return directly from your ledger — VAT on sales (T1), VAT on purchases (T2) and the net position (T3/T4), with zero-rated and exempt supply totals. Filing via Revenue Online Service (ROS) remains manual for now; direct ROS API submission is on the roadmap.
Live today
- VAT3 return computation — T1, T2, T3 and T4 figures calculated from your ledger; copy totals into Revenue Online Service (ROS)
- Multi-currency accounting in EUR
- AI categorisation and bank-feed reconciliation
- Invoicing, AR/AP ageing, P&L, balance sheet, cash flow
On the roadmap
- Direct ROS API submission via Revenue's Online Services gateway
- Intra-EU E1, E2, ES1 and ES2 figures, plus VIES supplementary return automation
- Irish payroll (PAYE Modernisation, USC, PRSI)
How Irish VAT works
Country context, not a description of HelloBooks. Ireland runs a two-monthly VAT cycle plus one annual detail return, and both are filed through ROS.
- Tax authority
- Revenue, formally the Revenue Commissioners. Almost everything a VAT-registered business does with Revenue runs through ROS, the Revenue Online Service.
- Standard rate
- 23%, applied to most goods and services.
- Reduced and special rates
- 13.5% and 9% reduced rates, a 4.8% rate for qualifying livestock supplies, and 0% zero-rating. Which goods and services sit at 13.5% versus 9% is revised in Budget rounds, so set rates from Revenue’s current rate database, not from memory.
- The return
- The VAT3. The normal taxable period is two months — January–February, March–April and so on — though Revenue authorises other frequencies in particular cases.
- Deadline
- The 19th of the month following the period, extended to the 23rd where both the return and the payment go through ROS. A January–February period is normally due by 23 March.
- Registration thresholds
- €85,000 for the supply of goods and €42,500 for the supply of services, both effective from 1 January 2025. Mixed supplies follow separate rules, and a non-established trader can be obliged to register with no threshold at all.
- Annual RTD
- The Return of Trading Details breaks sales and purchases down by VAT rate, excluding VAT. It covers your accounting year and is due through ROS by the 23rd of the following month — 23 January for a 31 December year end. It carries no payment of its own.
- Currency
- The euro. VAT is accounted for in EUR.
From ledger to VAT3
Irish VAT rewards good coding rather than clever arithmetic. Several rate bands, self-accounting on intra-Community acquisitions, reverse charge on certain domestic construction work and postponed accounting on imports mean the same euro amount can land in a different box depending on who the counterparty was and where the goods came from.
HelloBooks handles that at the transaction. Bank feeds are matched to invoices and bills, AI categorisation proposes the ledger account and tax treatment, and the tax code on each line decides which VAT3 box it totals into. At period end the T, E, ES and PA figures are computed, each drilling back to the documents behind it.
The submission itself stays with you. You log in to ROS and enter the totals by the 23rd. HelloBooks prepares and computes the return; it does not file it.
Who this is for
Irish SMEs and owner-managed companies past the spreadsheet stage: the agency invoicing clients across the EU and the US, the online retailer dealing with distance sales and postponed accounting, the construction subcontractor working under reverse charge, and the software company reporting in euros while collecting in dollars. It is a weaker fit if you need Irish payroll in the same system — PAYE Modernisation, USC and PRSI are on the roadmap.
Bank connections in Ireland
Powered by PlaidHelloBooks connects to banks across Ireland through Plaid, our open-banking partner — securely import EUR transactions for automatic AI categorisation and reconciliation. Supported institutions include:
- AIB (Allied Irish Banks)
- Bank of Ireland
- Permanent TSB
- An Post Money
- Revolut
- N26
…and thousands more institutions via Plaid open banking. Connections are read-only and bank-grade secure — HelloBooks never sees your login. Prefer not to connect? Upload a statement and HelloBooks’ AI reconciles it line by line.
Frequently asked questions
Does HelloBooks file my VAT3 to Revenue?
No. HelloBooks computes the VAT3 figures from your ledger and shows them box by box; you sign in to ROS and enter them. Direct ROS API submission is on the roadmap and is not live today.
What sits in each VAT3 box?
T1 is VAT on sales, including VAT you self-account for on intra-Community acquisitions, reverse-charge transactions and postponed-accounting imports. T2 is deductible VAT on purchases; T3 is the excess of T1 over T2 and T4 the reverse. E1 and E2 are the VAT-exclusive values of intra-Community goods dispatched and acquired, ES1 and ES2 those of reportable services supplied and received, and PA1 the value of goods imported under postponed accounting.
Do I have to register for VAT from day one?
Not necessarily. An Irish-established business registers when it exceeds — or expects to exceed — €85,000 of goods turnover or €42,500 of services turnover in a twelve-month period. Many register voluntarily below that to reclaim input VAT.
How does the RTD relate to my VAT3s?
The RTD is a rate-by-rate summary of the same trade the VAT3s already reported, so a year of consistently coded transactions is most of the work. Because each transaction is tagged with the rate that drove its VAT treatment, the rate-band analysis comes out of the ledger.
I invoice in sterling and dollars — does that break the VAT figures?
No. EUR is the functional currency; foreign-currency documents are recorded at their transaction rate and revalued, with the differences posted to your ledger. VAT3 totals stay in euros.
What about VIES and Intrastat?
Intra-EU supplies to VAT-registered customers go on VIES statements, and Intrastat adds a monthly statistical declaration of goods movements once you cross the relevant threshold. Automating VIES is on the roadmap; the data is already in your ledger.
Get started
General information as at the review date below, not tax advice. Confirm your position with Revenue or your adviser.
Page last reviewed: 2026-09-05.