🇱🇹 Tax Refunds for Lithuanian Workers in Ireland: Four Years You Probably Never Claimed

Being an EU citizen changes less than you'd think

Lithuania joined the EU on 1 May 2004, and Ireland was one of the few member states that opened its labour market to the new members straight away. So you have never needed an employment permit, you have no stamp, and you can move between employers whenever you like. That is a real advantage over non-EU colleagues.

For tax, it changes almost nothing.

Irish tax residence is decided by days in the country: 183 in a tax year, or 280 across the current and previous year together, as long as you were here for more than 30 days in the current one. Citizenship does not enter the test. Once resident you get the same personal credit (€2,000), the same Employee Tax Credit (€2,000), the same €44,000 standard rate band for 2026 and the same reliefs as an Irish citizen — and the same obligation to claim them yourself. Revenue sets out the day tests on its tax residence page; our tax residence checker runs the count for you.

There is one rule that favours EU citizens specifically. If you are not Irish resident — say you worked in Ireland for part of a year and went back to Vilnius — Revenue still gives EU citizens full tax credits where at least 75% of worldwide income is taxable in Ireland, and a proportion of them (Irish income over total income) where it is less. Revenue explains this on its page on tax credits for non-residents. It matters for anyone who split a year between the two countries.

The place free movement genuinely helps is speed: you can get a PPS number and start work faster than someone waiting on a permit. Which means you were less likely to spend months on emergency tax, and more likely to have quietly overpaid for years in a different way.

Why long-settled Lithuanian workers are the biggest under-claimers

Nobody at Revenue will write to you about the Rent Tax Credit. Your employer does not know what you spent at the GP. Your payroll department has no idea that your trade carries a fixed expense allowance.

Ireland's PAYE system taxes your salary correctly and stops there. Everything else — rent, medical costs, working from home, the expenses of your occupation, how credits are split between a married couple — depends on you telling Revenue. And the longer you have been here without doing that, the more has accumulated.

The gaps we see most often in Lithuanian households that arrived in the 2000s:

• The Rent Tax Credit, which only started in 2022: €500 for 2022 and 2023, €1,000 for 2024 and 2025, and €1,000 for 2026 (€1,150 from 2027). Jointly assessed couples get double. Full detail in the Rent Tax Credit guide.
• Medical expenses across the whole family — GP visits, prescriptions, physiotherapy, non-routine dental — relieved at 20% and almost never pooled into one claim.
• Remote Working Relief: 30% of electricity, heating and broadband for the days you worked from home, less anything your employer paid.
• Flat Rate Expenses for your occupation, a fixed annual deduction that needs no receipts and is missing from a surprising number of payslips.
• Joint assessment never set up because Revenue was never told about the marriage.

Flat rate expenses deserve a closer look, because the trades Lithuanian workers are concentrated in — construction, logistics, hospitality, retail, healthcare — are precisely the ones Revenue lists. These are the current amounts from Revenue's flat rate expenses list, unchanged for every year from 2020 to 2026:

A flat rate expense is a deduction from taxable income, not a credit, so it is worth 20% or 40% of the amount depending on your top rate. €153 a year sounds like nothing. Four years of it for an electrician on the higher rate is €244.80 — and it is the kind of claim that takes two minutes once you know it exists. The full list and how to add it to your record are in flat rate expenses in Ireland.

Four years, stacked: a concrete example

Say you came from Kaunas in 2008, you are a qualified electrician earning €45,000 a year, single, and you have rented the same apartment in Dublin since 2022. You spend around €600 a year on GP visits and prescriptions. You have never filed an Income Tax Return, because nothing ever seemed wrong — and nothing was wrong.

€45,000 is above the single person's standard rate band in every one of those years (€36,800 in 2022, €40,000 in 2023, €42,000 in 2024, €44,000 in 2025), so every euro of deduction is worth 40%. Here is what four open years look like:

Three things to notice.

The Rent Tax Credit is worth different amounts in different years. €500 for 2022 and 2023, €1,000 from 2024. If you have seen "€1,000 a year" quoted flatly, that is the current figure applied backwards to years where it did not apply. You also need to be the one paying the rent, and the tenancy must be registered with the RTB where registration is required.

The flat rate expense is the line people have never heard of. It is the smallest number in the table and the easiest to claim: no receipts, no forms, just your occupation added to your Revenue record. Once it is on your record it carries forward every year.

The medical figure is the one people leave behind. €600 a year is unremarkable — a few GP visits and a repeat prescription. Each receipt looks too small to bother with, which is exactly why the four-year total never gets claimed. Non-routine dental work needs a Form Med 2 signed by the dentist, and you can only claim what insurance did not reimburse.

If you are married and your spouse earns less, joint assessment can add more again: part of their rate band and unused credits can transfer to you. It only applies once Revenue knows about the marriage, so it does not happen by itself. The whole four-year process, from Statement of Liability to refund, is in claiming PAYE tax back for the first time.

Property and income still in Lithuania

Ireland and Lithuania have a Double Taxation Convention signed in Dublin on 18 November 1997, in effect for Irish income tax since 6 April 1999 and since modified by the Multilateral Instrument. Revenue publishes the dates of effect and the synthesised treaty text.

The treaty is useful, but it does not operate by itself. The situation that comes up most:

You kept a flat in Vilnius, Kaunas or Klaipėda and rent it out. Under Article 6 of the treaty, rental income is taxable in the country where the property is, so Lithuania keeps the first right to tax it. Once you are Irish tax resident, the same income can also come within the Irish net. Article 23 resolves the overlap with the credit method: Ireland allows a credit for the Lithuanian tax paid against the Irish tax on the same income, capped at the Irish tax attributable to it. You have to claim the credit and evidence the Lithuanian tax paid — a bank statement showing the rent arriving is not enough. How to report it is in foreign rental income tax in Ireland.

If you are not Irish-domiciled, the remittance basis may apply. Moving to Ireland does not by itself make you Irish-domiciled, and a resident who is not domiciled here is generally taxed on foreign income and gains only to the extent they are brought into Ireland. Lithuanian rent that stays in a Lithuanian bank account is one thing; the same rent transferred to your Irish account to pay for a car is another. Employment income for work done in Ireland is always taxed here regardless. See the remittance basis in Ireland.

On the Lithuanian side, the State Tax Inspectorate (VMI) says rental income from residential property is subject to personal income tax (GPM) at 15%, or to a fixed-rate business licence when the property is let to an individual, and that a resident's annual return is due by 1 May of the following year. Lithuania's 2026 income tax reform kept the 15% rate only for rental income up to 12 times the average wage (roughly €27,000 a year); the part above that now falls into the progressive 20%, 25% and 32% bands. The VMI page linked above still shows the pre-2026 thresholds, so check the current treatment on vmi.lt or with a Lithuanian adviser before you file. VMI also treats you as a non-resident of Lithuania only once your permanent home and centre of interests are outside the country and you spend fewer than 183 days there in a year (and fewer than 280 over two years), so a long stint in Ireland does not automatically end your Lithuanian obligations.

Thinking of selling the flat? Irish residents and ordinarily residents are within Irish CGT on assets wherever they are, again subject to the remittance basis for the non-domiciled. Once you have been Irish resident for three consecutive years you become ordinarily resident, and that continues for three years after you leave — so moving home does not immediately end the exposure. Get the position checked before you sell, not after.

Your Sodra years and your PRSI years

One thing worth knowing even though it is not a refund: your Lithuanian social insurance record with Sodra and your Irish PRSI record are not lost by moving between the two countries.

Under EU coordination rules, when you claim a pension the authority has to take into account all the periods you worked in other EU countries, so that someone who paid into Sodra until 2006 and PRSI since can still reach the minimum contribution requirement. Each country then pays a pro-rata pension for its own years. The rules are set out plainly on the EU's state pensions abroad page. You apply in the country where you live when you retire.

Two practical points: PRSI is not refundable through the process in this guide — it is income tax and USC that get reviewed — and your PRSI record is worth checking periodically for gaps, because gaps are much easier to fix before you retire than after.

Emergency tax and your PPS number

If you arrived recently, or a relative is about to, this is the one problem that still catches new Lithuanian arrivals. Emergency tax applies when your employer has no Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN) for you. With no PPS number on file, every euro is taxed at 40%. With a PPS number but no RPN, you get the single person's standard rate band for the first four weeks and 40% on all income from week five, with emergency USC at a flat 8% in 2026. Revenue sets this out in its emergency tax rules.

The fix is administrative: get your PPS number from the Department of Social Protection, register for myAccount, and add the job there so Revenue issues the RPN. Once it arrives, payroll recalculates on a cumulative basis and refunds the excess in your next pay. If the year has already ended, the money comes back through your Statement of Liability instead. The step-by-step is in emergency tax in Ireland.

What you need before you claim

• Your PPS number.
• myAccount access — registration needs your PPS number, date of birth and contact details; you get instant access by verifying two items such as a payslip or your driving licence number, or a password by post — or sign in with MyGovID.
• Your IBAN, entered in your Revenue profile. Refunds go to the account on record; without one Revenue posts a cheque, which is slower and awkward if you have moved.
• Your Employment Detail Summary for each year, downloadable from myAccount. It is built from what employers reported to Revenue, so you do not need old payslips and it does not matter if a former employer has closed.
• Your occupation, so flat rate expenses can be added to your record.
• Medical receipts for the whole household, plus Form Med 2 for non-routine dental work.
• Your RT number and landlord details if you rent.
• Electricity, heating and broadband bills and a count of days worked from home, if you claim Remote Working Relief.
• Evidence of Lithuanian tax paid, from VMI rather than a tenant, if you are claiming a foreign tax credit.
• Your spouse's income details, if you are looking at joint assessment.

If you would rather not reconstruct four years of paperwork yourself, our Tax Back service reviews every open year and every relief. No refund, no fee.

One deadline that actually matters

Revenue's four year rule means you can claim four years at a time. As of 2026 that is 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, each needing its own return.

The 2022 year closes permanently on 31 December 2026. After that it is gone, regardless of what you were owed.

If you have been here since 2004 and never filed a return, do not start with last year. Start with 2022, because it is the only one with a clock on it. And if you are thinking about moving back to Lithuania, do the whole review before you go, while you still have an Irish bank account and active myAccount access. See leaving Ireland and the refund you might be owed.

Where to start

If you have been working in Ireland since 2022 or earlier and have never filed an Income Tax Return, open myAccount and start with 2022: complete the Income Tax Return, adding your rent, your occupation and your medical costs, and the Statement of Liability follows a few days later. That is the year with a deadline. Not sure what it adds up to? Run the Tax Refund calculator first.

Related reading

• Mokesčių grąžinimas Airijoje — this guide in Lithuanian
• Rent Tax Credit Ireland guide
• Flat rate expenses in Ireland
• Emergency tax in Ireland
• Foreign rental income tax in Ireland
• The remittance basis in Ireland

Questions we get asked