SLIDE 1
Hello and welcome to this webinar session for Standard Life’s Distribution Calculations pay run for 2025. My name is Sarah Murray and I’m a payroll specialist here at Standard Life. The Customer Payroll team are responsible for looking after our customers’ Distribution liability for 2025 and ensuring that all taxes are correctly submitted to the Revenue. This session is a quick overview to tell you what we do and how it all works.
Moving on to our first slide.
SLIDE 2
So just to go through the topics that we will cover here today. Firstly, I’ll give a general overview of what Distribution means and the tax liability that the Revenue will be looking for.
I’ll also go through the important dates to remember when it comes to Standard Life’s December pay runs, and some information on setting up withdrawals.
We will cover setting up bank details on your policy. A withdrawal paid directly into your bank account will ensure that payment reaches you before Christmas. We would encourage that if you are currently paid by cheque that you move to Bank Transfer payment. Postal services in December are always that bit busier, so moving from cheque to bank transfer will avoid any delays in your payment reaching you.
Our last topics will be some information on how you can allocate tax cut offs and credits to your Standard Life income before your first withdrawal, how we apply this information to your payment, and some information on PRSI (Pay Related Social Insurance).
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 3
So, a general overview of our Distribution Calculations. Annually a customer must withdraw a certain percentage from their Approved Retirement Fund and/or Vested Personal Retirement Savings Account. The withdrawal is based on the fund value of all ARF/Vested PRSA polices at 30th November, and a percentage based on the customer’s age or the customer’s fund value. To comply with this Revenue obligation, we run a standalone pay run every December. Some customers have a regular monthly or quarterly or half-yearly or yearly withdrawal set up, and some customers take ad hoc withdrawals from their ARF/Vested PRSA policy. Withdrawals taken through-out the tax year are included in the calculation of the value liable to tax.
If you are aged between 60 and 70, and if 60 it must be for the full year, then 4% of your fund value is liable for tax. If you are aged over 70, again aged 70 for the full year, then 5% of your fund value is liable for tax. When I say you must be 60 or 70 for the full year it effectively means that a person born on the 1st January and is 60 this year WILL be liable for Distribution as they are 60 for the full year, but a person born on the 2nd January and is 60 this year, WILL NOT be liable for a Distribution Calculation as they aren’t 60 for the full year. If you have ARF/Vested PRSA assets worth over €2million, 6% of your fund value is liable to tax for Distribution. If you fall into this category, please contact us at arf_payroll@standardlife.ie for more information.
If you have multiple ARF or Vested PRSA policies with us, your fund value, for the purposes of calculating the 4, 5 or 6% liability to tax, is your total Standard Life ARF and Vested PRSA portfolio. Withdrawals taken during the year from any of your ARF/Vested PRSA policies will be deducted from your liability to tax. Any Distribution due will be deducted proportionally across your ARF/Vested PRSA policies.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 4
So, the important dates to note around Distribution. The first date is Friday 28th November. This is the deadline date for all ad-hoc withdrawal instructions for 2025.
So if you have a particular request or instruction for payment that you want to send into us, if that’s with us by the 28th November it means we WILL be able to action it in December this year, as always this would be assuming all the necessary information is received.
We have what we call our “main run”, that’s our main monthly pay run which goes out BEFORE our Distribution liability pay run. The main run for regular withdrawals is the 12th December, so payments leave our bank account on 12th December and should arrive in your bank account shortly after that.
This run pays out any customer’s “Regular” incomes which are already set up, along with any ad hoc withdrawals processed. Once we go past the 12th December, we start our Distribution pay run, meaning that for any Distribution Calculations that produce a liability, payment will be issued from our account on the 22nd December and again will arrive in your bank account shortly after that.
We will work to avoid delays in cheque payments reaching you. If you are currently on cheque payment, you may wish to consider moving to bank transfer - it is safer and faster, and it will avoid delays in payments reaching you.
That covers the key dates to remember, so Friday 28th November in particular, if you can get any specific withdrawal instructions into us by that date it will ensure that you receive payment in time for Christmas.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 5
Here we have some information on setting up a regular withdrawal on your ARF/Vested PRSA policy. A regular withdrawal can be set up to be paid monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly. You can also take ad hoc withdrawals throughout the year. If you would like to set up a regular withdrawal, please contact us at arf_payroll@standardlife.ie and we’ll let you know the requirements. All withdrawals taken throughout the tax year are included in the calculation of your Distribution liability in December.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 6
Here we have some points on setting up bank details on your policy. As I said earlier, you can get your money faster if you opt to receive your payments by bank transfer. To set up a bank transfer payment, you simply forward a copy of a recent bank statement and we’ll add the bank details to your policy. By recent, we mean a statement within the last 6 months. Besides being paid faster, bank transfers are a more secure payment method and you will receive the payment before Christmas. Cheque payments are likely to be slower with the usual Christmas postal delays.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 7
Just a little information if you are a new customer and you wish to assign tax cut offs and credits to your Standard Life income in advance of your first withdrawal. As your pension provider, we must first register your pension with the Revenue, and then you can complete the allocation of tax cut offs and credits to your Standard Life income. You can email us at arf_payroll@standardlife.ie requesting that we register you on our payroll. Once the registration is complete, you can then, if you wish, change your tax basis and allocation of tax cut offs and credits to your Standard Life income. The Revenue will then issue Standard Life with a RPN containing this information. RPN stands for Revenue Payroll Notification, and it is the employer’s or pension provider’s version of the Tax Credit Certificate. If you have any queries regarding your tax situation, you can contact the Revenue’s Jobs and Pensions Helpline at the number shown on the slide. It is important to note that you must be already registered for PAYE (Pay As You Earn) purposes before a RPN can be issued to Standard Life.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 8
An ARF withdrawal is treated as investment income and is subject to PRSI Class S.
If you are aged between 66 and 70 and born after 1st January 1958, you will continue to be liable for PRSI Class S until such time as you are awarded the State Pension (Contributory), or reach age 70, whichever is earliest. Once you are awarded the State Pension (Contributory), the Revenue will notify us through your RPN and we’ll update your PRSI to Class M, which is a nil contribution. The Department of Social Protection changed the Class S PRSI rate from 4.1% to 4.2% on 1st October 2025.
If you have any queries regarding your PRSI contributions, you can contact the Department of Social Protection at the number shown on the slide.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 9
The Revenue introduced PAYE Modernisation in January 2019. Individuals look after their taxes online at www.revenue.ie. There you’ll find the myAccount page, where you can review the tax credit allocation to your Standard Life income. We use your latest RPN to tax your payment. In line with the Revenue’s guidelines, we are obliged to operate the latest RPN available. As part of our payroll process, we download RPNs via the Revenue’s website when running our payroll, and again we use this to calculate your tax liability. On the day we pay you, your payment can be viewed on the Revenue’s myAccount page.
You can allocate tax cut offs and credits using our tax registration number for ARF/Vested PRSA payments, 3586780HH, and that number is shown on the slide.
Any payments that don’t go through by the end of 2025, will be paid in January 2026. So again, to remind you that the deadline date for payment instruction is Friday 28th November. Payment instructions received after Friday 28th November will be made in January 2026. There is no option to backdate payments to the 2025 payroll for tax purposes.
Moving on to the next slide.
SLIDE 10
So that concludes this session. If you have any questions, please do email us @ arf_payroll@standardlife.ie
The arf_payroll@standardlife.ie email address is also where you can send scanned copies of your signed payment instruction, bank details and anything further that we’ve discussed here today.
And to move on to our final slide.
SLIDE 11
Thank you for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed it and found the information useful.
