Have you ever held your first payslip in your hand and wondered why your take-home pay is smaller than the hours-times-rate sum you did in your head? You worked the hours, you earned the pay, then a chunk vanished into three-letter codes you don't recognise: PAYE, USC, PRSI.

Today's lesson cracks open the Irish payslip line by line. By the end of class you will be able to point at every line on a real payslip and say what it is, where the money goes, and what percentage of your gross pay it eats. That skill is useful the day you start your first job, and it is the heart of the MA4 Key Assignment evidence you will bank today.

Watch a real monthly payslip take shape on screen. Notice how the gross-pay figure at the top splits into four deductions in the middle (PAYE, USC, PRSI, pension), and how what's left at the bottom, the net pay, is what actually lands in the bank.

Quick reference for the three-letter codes (keep this in view while you work):

• PAYE = Pay-As-You-Earn income tax
• USC = Universal Social Charge
• PRSI = Pay-Related Social Insurance

Now you'll read a real payslip end to end. Aoife works full-time at her local SuperValu store. Below is her monthly payslip for May. Read the case study, then answer the analysis questions in your maths copy.

Now it's your turn to drive the payslip widget. Drag the gross-pay slider up and down. Watch the four deductions change. Click any deduction line to read what it means. The guided prompt below tells you exactly what to investigate.

Here is your Key Assignment evidence for today. Build an Annotated Payslip table in your maths copy (or download ma4_l05_annotated_payslip.docx from the Maths Portfolio folder and fill it in on a device). Two rows are already done as worked examples. Fill in the remaining two rows for USC and PRSI using Aoife's figures from the case study.

Instructions:

1. Copy the headed table into your copy or open the template document.
2. Read the two pre-filled rows so you can see the worked-example pattern.
3. Fill in the USC and PRSI rows: what the deduction means in one sentence, and what percentage of Aoife's €2,400 gross it represents (use a calculator, one decimal place).
4. Save the artefact as ma4_l05_annotated_payslip.docx in your Maths_Portfolio/ folder, or hand the paper version to your teacher at the end of class.

Think about

• Aoife's net pay is about 84% of her gross. If you started a similar full-time retail job tomorrow on €2,400 gross, would knowing that gap in advance change how you'd plan your monthly spending?
• Which of the four deductions on Aoife's payslip surprised you most, either because it was bigger than you expected or smaller than you expected? Why?

Key Takeaways

• Gross pay − Deductions = Net pay. Always. Every Irish payslip follows this rule.
• PAYE, USC, and PRSI are the three statutory deductions on every employed payslip. Pension is added when the employer offers a scheme.
• Every deduction can be expressed as a percentage of gross: divide the deduction by gross, multiply by 100.
• Your annotated-payslip artefact (ma4_l05_annotated_payslip.docx) is saved in your Maths Portfolio and will be selected as MA4 KA1 Collecting evidence later in the module.

Coming Up

In the next lesson you'll go deeper on the three statutory deductions: what tax band PAYE is calculated in, how USC bands work, and what PRSI Class A1 actually buys you. You'll use the same payslip widget in challenge mode to predict the deductions before you check them.