5 things you’ll need to sort out before starting a new job

Got yourself a new job, is it?

Unreal, fair play. After all the scrolling through specs online, hunting for the perfect position, and stressing out about how to best talk yourself up in your interview without sounding conceited, you've finally done it. You've secured the job of your dreams! The hard part is over! Everything will be fine from this day forward! Or at least it will be if you remember to sort out these five things before you start. They're fairly important, after all. 1. Dig out your PPS number.  Find it, write it somewhere, store it in your phone, set a daily alarm where it pops up to remind you that it exists. Just memorise it because the chances are you're going to be needing it a good bit during the first few weeks in your new job. You'll need it if you're filling out an employee starter form. You'll need it when you're setting up your tax. You'll need it before you get your first paycheck, and potentially after too. Basically, you'll need your PPS a lot so you might as well have it handy. You can find your PPS number on any tax document or potentially on your payslip. It's also printed on most documents issued by social welfare offices. However, if you just haven't a clue where to find yours you can ring your local social welfare office and they'll sort you out. 2. Get your P45. Ideally, this step should be done before you physically leave your old job but if in the stress of the moment you forget to ask for your P45 never fear because you can easily ask your past-employer to send it over to you. Once you have the P45, give it to your new employer. They'll need this so they can calculate how much tax you're going to be paying, and so you don't end up getting emergency taxed through the roof for months on end. Emergency tax is applied if you have not provided a P45, if you have not provided a P45 with a Personal Public Services Number (PPSN), or if your employer has not received a certificate of your tax credits. Alternatively, this can all be done by registering an account with Revenue.ie. Which is why you need to... 3. Register an account on Revenue.ie.  In order to view and manage your taxes online, you'll need to make sure you're registered with Revenue. (And even if you don't want to view and manage your taxes online, some companies will require you to have an active account with Revenue in order to view your payslips online so you may as well do it anyway.) Registering is easy enough. All you need is your PPS number (which you will, of course, have memorised), your date of birth, email address, phone number, and home address. Revenue will then send you a letter with a pin so you can log into your account online. You may have to ring the actual tax office to confirm your registration then, but once you're in, you'll be able to see what tax credits you have, request your end of year statements, and manage your records. 4. Get the company registration number.  If you get emergency taxed after starting your new job, it's most likely because you haven't moved over your tax credits. To do this, you'll need to get your new company's registration number from the finance team and input that into Revenue. A tax credit certificate will then be sent to your new company so they'll know exactly how much you should be getting taxed. 5. Register your new job on Revenue.  You might think that registering your details with Revenue will have you all sorted, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. You'll need to make sure that your new position is actually registered with Revenue too. This is necessary to make sure that your employer receives a copy of your tax credits and to avoid emergency tax. Your new job may have been registered when you set your account up, but it's always good to double check that the info is in there so you don't end up losing out on a sizeable chunk of your paycheck. Because there's nothing worse than booking three mini-breaks and buying out the entire A/W stock in River Island only to find out that you actually haven't been paid enough this month. Tragic.