Updated August 2026 · 10 min read
General information for Irish trade businesses, not tax advice. Confirm anything that affects your business with your accountant or Revenue.
Quick answer: the RTD (Return of Trading Details) is an annual return every VAT-registered business in Ireland has to file with Revenue. It summarises the value of your sales, purchases and certain acquisitions for the accounting period, broken down by the VAT treatment that applies. There's no payment with it, but an outstanding RTD can cause Revenue to withhold tax refunds, hold up your tax clearance, and, if you're a subcontractor, push up the rate deducted from your payments. It's painful for one reason: it asks a tax-shaped question about a year you lived job by job. The fix is boring and effective: capture the VAT treatment as you go, and the RTD becomes a straightforward year-end reconciliation instead of a year-long reconstruction.
What the RTD actually is
Once a year, on top of your regular VAT returns, Revenue asks every VAT-registered trader for the Return of Trading Details. Where your periodic VAT return says "here's the VAT I owe or reclaim for this period," the RTD says "here's the relevant accounting period: sales, purchases and acquisitions, split by VAT treatment."
In practice the return is built around four questions, each answered with your net figures for the year broken down by VAT rate:
- Did you make supplies of goods or services?
- Did you acquire goods or services from the EU, or import goods where postponed accounting applies?
- Did you purchase goods or services for resale?
- Did you purchase other business goods or services, not for resale, where the VAT can be deducted? Think eligible tools, fuel, equipment and professional services.
Three things worth knowing. The figures are net, meaning VAT-exclusive. You cannot enter a negative figure in any field, which catches people out when a year has heavy credit notes. And a single transaction can legitimately produce entries in two sections.
That last one is worth a moment if you work in construction, because the obvious guess is wrong. Where you self-account for the VAT under the reverse charge, Revenue's guidance puts the value in section one, the supplies section, with a matching entry in section three, rather than in the acquisitions section most people reach for first. A principal contractor enters construction services received from a subcontractor in section one at the rate that would have applied. This is exactly the sort of placement question worth handing to your accountant rather than reasoning out yourself.
There's no cheque attached. It's a statistical and compliance return: as Revenue puts it, the RTD "is not showing VAT liability or refund information." Revenue uses it to check the trading figures behind the returns you filed through the year, and Deloitte's guidance notes that a nil RTD gets rejected where those returns showed real figures, so filing a blank one to clear the notice is not a way out.
Who has to file it, and when
Every business registered for VAT in Ireland files an RTD, sole trader or limited company, one van or ten. It's filed through ROS (Revenue Online Service), and many trade businesses have their accountant file it as part of year end.
It's due within 23 days of the end of your accounting period, which in practice means the 23rd of the month after the month your period ends. If your accounting period ends on 31 August, the RTD is due by 23 September. For a calendar-year business, that's the 23rd of January.
One trap: that is not the same deadline rule as your periodic VAT return, so don't work it out from habit. The RTD has its own date, tied to your accounting period rather than your VAT period, and your accountant will confirm the exact one for your year.
Why nobody enjoys it
Because nobody experiences the RTD during the year. Your year happens as jobs: an enquiry, a quote, a visit, materials off the wholesaler, an invoice, a payment. The RTD arrives afterwards and asks someone to turn that operational history into a tax reporting structure, sorted by VAT treatment and split between resale and other deductible purchases.
If that information wasn't captured as the work happened, it gets reconstructed after the fact, by you or by your accountant at your expense. That reconstruction is the whole reason the RTD has the reputation it has.
What happens if you don't file it
The consequences aren't simply a late-filing penalty, which is exactly why people underestimate them. Revenue treats an outstanding RTD as a compliance issue, and its own guidance sets out what follows.
Refunds get withheld. Not "may": if you claim a repayment or refund under any tax head and last year's RTD is outstanding, Revenue withholds the repayment until it's filed.
Tax clearance can be held up. Clearance checks your returns and payments history, and it can be refused where returns including the RTD are not filed. For a trade business, tax clearance is not optional paperwork: it's what lets you take on public work, certain commercial contracts and grant-supported jobs.
You can't start a phased payment arrangement. If you ever need to agree instalments with Revenue on a tax bill, outstanding returns block the application before it begins, which is the worst possible time to discover an unfiled RTD.
So an unfiled RTD has a way of surfacing at exactly the wrong moment, usually while you're trying to win work or trying to manage a bill.
If you're a construction subcontractor, this one matters more
There's a further consequence that hits cash flow directly. Revenue's guidance states that RCT-registered cases may face higher deduction rates where an annual return such as the RTD hasn't been filed. RCT (Relevant Contracts Tax, the withholding system for construction work) runs at 0%, 20% or 35% depending on your compliance position, and the money comes off payments to you until the position is fixed. An overdue RTD is not just your accountant's headache; it can quietly cost you a fifth or a third of each payment.
How to make next year's RTD a non-event
The whole trick is keeping rate-level records as you go, so the year-end summary already exists:
- Capture the VAT treatment on the line, not just the invoice total. Construction and trades work has its own rules (the reduced rate applies to a lot of construction services, and the two-thirds rule can change the treatment of a job where materials dominate), so don't assume every part of every job is treated the same way. Your accountant sets the rules; your system should record what actually happened, line by line.
- Purchases need the same discipline, recorded as they happen rather than from a bag of receipts in January, with enough detail to tell resale purchases from other deductible business costs.
- Your accountant gets the period as data, not paper. Exports they can load, organised by VAT treatment, with the invoices behind them if they need to check one.
Do those three things and the RTD stops being a project.
Where JobFlow fits (and where it doesn't)
We build JobFlow, Irish job management software, so here's the honest version of the pitch. Knowing VAT rates is table stakes; any decent system does that. The useful part is capturing the information your accountant needs while the work is happening, instead of leaving it to be reconstructed afterwards. JobFlow puts the correct Irish VAT treatment on every invoice line as the job is billed, reports on a cash-receipts or invoice basis (whichever your accountant has you on, subject to Revenue's eligibility rules for the cash-receipts basis), and at year end gives you a one-click Accountant Pack of the period's reports in Xero-ready and Sage-ready formats, with an RTD data export beside it.
One detail if you're on the cash receipts basis: the RTD export is always built on invoice dates, whatever basis the rest of your VAT reporting is set to. The return asks for figures as per your sales and purchase invoices, so that's the view it takes, and the reports screen says so rather than leaving you to work it out.
Be clear about what that export is, because the name promises more than any job management tool can deliver. It's your annual net sales by VAT rate: the sales side, ready to drop into the return. It is not the return. Your purchases and expenses live in your accounting package, not here, and questions two, three and four of the RTD are built from exactly those. So JobFlow hands your accountant a clean, rate-coded picture of the sales side and the export to work from; they assemble the rest, review it and file. The honest promise is a much simpler reconciliation, not a printout.
More on how that side of the system works on our invoicing page and in the Irish accounting stack on the homepage. If you're weighing up tools rather than deadlines, we compared the options in best invoicing software for Irish trades.
Next in this series: cash receipts or invoice basis, on whether you pay VAT when you invoice or when you actually get paid, and why one common exclusion rules a lot of construction firms out of the choice.
FAQ
Is there a payment due with the RTD?
No. It's a statistical and compliance return: a summary of the period by VAT treatment. Your VAT payments happen through your regular periodic returns.
Who actually files the RTD?
It's filed through ROS, the Revenue Online Service. Many trade businesses have their accountant file it as part of year end, and your job is having the period's figures organised so they can.
What if my records aren't broken down by VAT treatment?
Then someone reconstructs the period from invoices and receipts, which is exactly the pain this article is about. Start capturing the treatment as you go and next year's RTD is a reconciliation rather than a rebuild.
Does an unfiled RTD affect my RCT rate?
It can. Revenue's guidance says RCT-registered cases may face higher deduction rates where an annual return such as the RTD is outstanding, and RCT runs at 0%, 20% or 35% depending on your compliance position. If you subcontract, that's a direct cash-flow reason to keep it filed.
Does JobFlow file my RTD for me?
No. JobFlow produces an RTD data export, your annual net sales by VAT rate, and the year's invoicing organised by rate. Your accountant assembles the rest, reviews it and files through ROS. Filing is their job, and rightly so.
Sources
Everything above is drawn from public guidance, and if any of it matters to your business, go and read the source rather than taking our word for it:
- Revenue, "VAT Return of Trading Details: guidance to assist filers" (Tax and Duty Manual, last updated February 2026). The primary source: the four sections, the net figures rule, the 23-day deadline, the reverse-charge placement, and the compliance measures. Read alongside section 76 of the VAT Consolidation Act 2010 and Regulation 24(1) of the Value-Added Tax Regulations 2010, which is where the obligation actually comes from.
- Revenue, "RCT for subcontractors". The 0%, 20% and 35% deduction rates and how the rate is set.
- Revenue, "Services taxable at the rate of the goods (the two-thirds rule)" and the Tax and Duty Manual on the VAT treatment of construction services.
- Deloitte Ireland, "Annual Return Trading Details". The nil-RTD rejection point, and the recommendation to prepare the RTD periodically rather than at year end.
- Grant Thornton, "VAT return of trading details". A plain-language walk through the same ground.
This is general information, not tax or legal advice. VAT rules, deadlines and thresholds change, and your own circumstances matter. Confirm your obligations with your accountant or with Revenue directly at revenue.ie.