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.