What Is PRSA?

A PRSA is portable, meaning it moves with you between jobs and works whether you're an employee, a director, or self-employed. For limited company directors and contractors specifically, the standout feature is how employer contributions are treated: since the 2024 Finance Act reform, an employer PRSA contribution is not subject to Benefit-in-Kind tax at all, and there's no percentage-of-salary cap tied to age the way older pension rules worked.

That makes routing company cash into a PRSA meaningfully more tax-efficient than paying yourself the equivalent as salary. Salary is hit with Income Tax, USC, and PRSI before it reaches you; an employer PRSA contribution goes in as a company expense, reducing Corporation Tax, with no personal tax charge on the way in.

The trade-off is access: pension money is locked away until retirement age (with some flexibility from age 50 in specific circumstances), so it suits money you don't need to spend now. For a director weighing salary extraction against long-term wealth building, the PRSA route can build meaningfully more retirement wealth for the same pre-tax company profit.