Contract notification

Your RCT registration number. Revenue matches the filing to you by this.

Drops its leading zero — 02831260F is sent as 2831260F. Revenue echoes it back with the zero, so round-tripping the value it returns will fail on the next request.

The tax head. RCT.

Your company name, as Revenue holds it.

The subcontractor’s tax reference. Optional in the sense that you may instead set NoTaxNumberAvailable — but then Revenue has nobody to look up and every payment authorises at 35%.

This single field is the difference between a subcontractor being paid in full and having a third of every payment withheld. It should be on their invoice.

Their name, matched against Revenue’s record. A trading name that differs from the registered name will not match.

For individuals.

What you are doing. Words, not initials — N is not a member of the enumeration and is rejected.

NEW for a new engagement. AMEND when scope, value or dates change — quote the existing ContractId. CANCEL if it never went ahead.

Revenue’s identifier for an existing contract. Present only on AMEND and CANCEL. Omit it on NEW — Revenue assigns one.

Set when you have no tax reference for the subcontractor. See the 35% consequence above.

Never send this. It is the indicative rate, and Revenue’s schema notes say it “cannot be modified externally”.

Populating it asserts a deduction rate you have no authority to assert. Rates are decided per payment, on the payment notification.

Revenue’s code for sole trader, company or partnership. What follows depends on it: an individual needs a date of birth, a company needs a CRO number, a partnership needs precedent partner details.

DD/MM/YYYY. For individuals.

Companies Registration Office number, for companies.

For partnerships — the partner who is answerable for the partnership’s tax affairs.

As above.

Whether they trade from a fixed premises. A numeric code, not a boolean, despite reading like one.

Their business address, not the site.

Numeric country code. Ireland is 1.

A foreign tax reference, for a non-resident subcontractor.

Numeric country code, where the subcontractor is resident.

Revenue’s sector code — which part of construction this is.

A plain description: “Internal plastering and skimming”. 90 characters, and subject to the restricted character set — this is the field most likely to contain a pasted em-dash.

Your name for the job. Revenue stores it; nothing depends on it.

Free-text location, separate from the structured site address.

Whole euro, not cent. An estimate, not a cap — payments are notified individually at their actual amounts and are not constrained by this figure.

When scope grows materially, amend the contract rather than leaving a stale number.

DD/MM/YYYY. When work actually starts.

If you are filing late, put the real date. Revenue has your submission timestamp regardless, so a flattering date creates an inconsistency rather than hiding one.

Expected completion. Amend if the job runs long.

Where the work is happening.

Revenue’s numeric county code. Not a county name.

Eight characters, so an Eircode fits only without its usual space.

Do they provide their own materials?

Do they provide their own plant and machinery? (Revenue’s spelling of the element name.)

Can they bring in their own people?

Are they paid per contract rather than by the hour or week?

Are they outside your pension and benefit arrangements?

Do they get themselves and their kit to site?

Do they negotiate the price rather than accept a set rate?

Do they carry their own liability insurance?

Do they decide how the work gets done?

Do they run a genuine business of their own?

Do they carry financial risk — do they lose money if the job goes badly?

Whether the subcontractor holds a Revenue notice of exclusion. Setting it to 1 suppresses all eleven questions above.

Answer it honestly. It is a convenient-looking shortcut past the awkward part of the form and, if untrue, a false statement to Revenue about the subcontractor’s status. We caught our own filings sending 1 here for subcontractors who held no such notice.

Site Identifier Number, when quoting an existing site rather than having Revenue assign one.

Your declaration that the information is correct. This is the element that makes the submission a formal statement.

Sibling of the contract records rather than a child. Your own reference, echoed back in the response — how a record in a hundred-record batch is tied to the row it came from.