What is the Return of Trading Details?

An annual return that every VAT-registered person in Ireland files after the end of their accounting period. It summarises the actual sales and purchases figures underlying the periodic VAT returns already filed, broken down by VAT rate. It is a statistical return, so no payment goes with it.

By the 23rd of the month following the end of your accounting period. An accounting period ending 31 December means an RTD due by 23 January.

Who has to file an RTD?

All VAT-registered persons, whether or not there was any trade in the period. It is not limited to businesses above a size or a turnover.

Through Revenue Online Service. The RTD appears alongside your other returns in ROS rather than being sent separately.

What is the difference between the RTD and the VAT3?

The VAT3 is periodic and carries the VAT you owe or reclaim. The RTD is annual, carries no payment, and restates the same trade broken down by rate. The RTD is the check on the VAT3s, which is why it is where inconsistencies surface.

The Return of Trading Details: the annual VAT return people forget

It is not a payment and it is not another VAT3. It is the annual reconciliation, and it is where a year of small mistakes shows up at once.

Last reviewed 21 September 2026

Most people meet the Return of Trading Details the way you meet a smoke alarm at 3am: unexpectedly, and because something else has gone wrong.

What it actually is

The RTD is a statistical return. It summarises the real sales and purchases figures sitting underneath the VAT3 returns you already filed during the year, broken down by VAT rate. No money moves with it. It does not create a liability and it does not generate a refund.

Which raises the obvious question: if nothing is owed, why does it exist?

Because it is the reconciliation

A VAT3 is a handful of totals. The RTD asks you to restate the same year at rate level — how much at 23%, how much at 13.5%, how much at 9%, how much zero-rated, and the same again for what you bought. Done properly, the two views agree.

Done on a year of invoices where the rate was chosen by eye, they do not, and the RTD is the first moment anyone notices. That is not a reason to dread it. It is a reason to have the rates right on the documents as you go, because the RTD is assembled from them.

When it is due

The RTD must be filed on the 23rd of the month following the end of the accounting period.

Accounting period ends	RTD due
31 December	23 January
31 March	23 April
30 June	23 July
31 August	23 September

Note that this is your accounting period, not the calendar year and not your VAT period. For most small Irish businesses the accounting period ends on 31 December and the RTD is a January job, which is why it collides with everything else in January.

Who files one

Every VAT-registered person. There is no turnover floor and no exemption for a quiet year — a business that traded very little still has an RTD to file, with the small figures on it. If you are registered, you are in.

Where it is filed

On ROS, alongside your other returns. It is not posted and it is not emailed.

Do not leave it to the day. The RTD asks for a year of trade split by rate. If that split is not already sitting in your records, assembling it from a folder of PDFs in the third week of January is a genuinely bad evening — and the figures you rush are the ones that disagree with the VAT3s you already filed.

The version of this that is not painful

The RTD is only as hard as your records are loose. If every invoice already carries its own rate per line, the annual split is a query rather than a reconstruction, and the figures come out the same as the ones you filed each period because they came from the same place.

That is the case for getting the rate right on the line rather than on the invoice, and for keeping the credit notes dated to the period they were issued in. Both are invisible all year and both decide how January goes.

Plain-English summary, not tax advice. Revenue’s Tax and Duty Manual on the VAT RTD is the authority, and it covers the sections of the return, amending one, and the compliance measures attached.

A year split by rate, because it was split by rate all along

Kayment applies the VAT rate per line, and reports the period totals per rate and per currency — on whichever basis you file, invoice or cash receipts. The annual view is the same arithmetic as the periodic one, so the two do not disagree.

See how it works

More guides

All guides