Irish Rail don't want my money
 

Here's an interesting mess that I've ended up in thank to a screw-up with TaxSaver. For whatever reason, my annual TaxSaver ticket which costs a shade under 4 grand didn't get renewed in time and now I can't have one until the start of October - not even a monthly to tide me over.

As part of the mess of trying to sort it out, I found out that there is no way around TaxSaver needing to be ordered before the 18th of the month. So basically, they need 13 days to process an order and give me a piece of plastic in return for four thousand euro. There also doesn't appear to be any way of buying a ticket over the phone with a company credit card.

And people wonder why Irish Rail are going bust.

I have a cut off of 15th due payroll run issue. It is what it is, previous place was the 4th!

They do take credit cards, it does depend on how you order the tickets though, if its by invoice its 14 days term

My place only does Jan-Dec Annuals, no Monthlies, and applications have to in in mid-November!

To be fair I'd imagine that there has to be a cut off date at some point given the volume of tickets being handled and the payroll cut-off issues.

Of course you can still buy a monthly ticket at the booking office - you just won't get the tax benefit.

All's well that ends well.

It seems to depend on who you talk to. It must have been escalated because I got a call back somebody effective who was able to sort it all out for me and refund the walk-up monthly I bought with my credit card.

So bad marks to whoever I talked to first and top grade to the guy who figured out to bend the rules to help out a customer. In the end I'm somebody who has been paid of 30 grand to Irish Rail over the last 10 years and it is positive that they are looking after the high-value customers.

The pay-roll cut-off shouldn't be an issue for an annual renewal as it would have all been set up already and in any case that isn't really anything to do with Taxsaver or Irish Rail.

Glad to hear that you got sorted out!

What was the rationale for employers being made the gatekeepers for Taxsaver when they were not for, for example, mortgage relief at source?

your banks are the gatekeepers there I think.

They are, but at least banks don't get to pick and choose whether their mortgages are tax deductible. Obliging workers to persuade their employer to participate strikes me as unequal treatment, but which makes total sense to civil servants and semi state employees who know their employer is on board.

One possible response to that is that we are lucky the government hasn't done away with it like so many other tax breaks recently.

We are indeed very lucky to have held onto the Taxsaver but if you were to end up paying full-whack for an annual commuter, that would completely gut what is left of the commuter traffic. When I was faced with having to spend 380 on a monthly pass, I totted it up and it would have only ended up costing me about 40 or 50 euro more to buy individual day returns for the 15 or so days I would end up travelling. I like a lot of the really long-distance commuter work from home 4 or 5 days a month.

When you also add in a month's worth of holidays and the 10 bank holidays, there is relatively little difference in the non Taxsaver ticket price and individual day returns. It really is only the tax benefit that makes commuter tickets worthwhile at all