Top earners based in Leinster

CHARTERED accountants are earning salaries of up to €560,000, but typical pay packets are in the region of €72,000, a new survey shows.

The latest annual survey by the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants (LSCA) showed a typical chartered accountant, who qualified in 2000, earned €72,400 a year. This compared with a typical figure of €71,000 last year.

But the survey, which covered almost 700 full-time and part-time accountants, also threw up evidence of wide discrepancies in pay. The lowest salary quoted by respondents was €34,000, which was the pay packet of a senior in a firm outside the top four of KPMG, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte.

The biggest winner during the year was an accountant in a financial services firm, who raked in €560,000 in addition to a company car.

The survey shows accountants in Leinster are paid more than their colleagues in Munster. Latest figures for the Munster region, which were compiled earlier this year by the Institute of Chartered Accountants and Premier Recruitment, found Munster accountants earned up to 20% less.

The LSCA survey said the main factors influencing salary levels were the size of the company, the position held and the year of qualification. LSCA chairman Lorcan Colclough said the survey proved the importance of chartered accountants to their organisations.

“Our annual salary survey has once again demonstrated that organisations highly value chartered accountants by paying them well for their expertise,” he said. “It also shows that chartered accountancy provides graduates entering the accountancy profession with a potentially financially rewarding career.”

The society blamed changes to the tax regime governing company cars for a fall-off in the number of firms including cars as part of their remuneration deals. It said the number of survey respondents with company cars had plummeted from 40% in 1999 to 17% this year.

Recent tax changes have forced employers to account for Benefit-in-Kind (BIK) tax on company cars and deduct it from salaries at source. BIK was previously the responsibility of each employee to declare on a self-assessed basis.