Digital Signing Certificate

With a Digital Signing Certificate, you can sign CRO forms online and eliminate paper and save time.

  • File your B1 - Annual Return,  with PDF Accounts fully online
  • File your B10 - Change of Director forms online;
  • File your B2 - Change of Address forms online;

You need to register for a Digital Signing Certificate. It’s easy to do. Registration for the certificate takes place via the Revenue Commissioners ROS website and instructions are detailed below

  • A: If your Company is already registered for Revenue On Line Service (ROS), your company can go ahead and generate "sub certs" for each director and secretary. Follow the instructions at Appendix 1.
  • B: If your Company has not registered for a ROS Certificate (as your tax advisor may handle the tax filing on your behalf* ) please follow the instructions below to register.

How to Get a Revenue On Line Service (ROS) Certificate

  • 1. Go to www.revenue.ieLinks to external website and select Register for ROS
  • 2. Apply for a ROS Access Number (RAN) - this requires you to povide a tax registration number, this is the number that you were assigned when you originally registered for Tax/VAT with Revenue.
  • 3. When received, enter your RAN, your tax registration number and an e-mail address and ROS will generate a password for you.
  • 4. Enter your ROS system password when received and follow the on-screen instructions as shown at A in the graphic below - i.e. Tax Type and Tax No - help icons are on screen to tell you exactly what is required.

Once  your Digital Certificate is installed you will be able to sign and submit electronic forms to the CRO at www.core.ieLinks to external website. You will of course also be able to sign and submit returns, make payments and gain access to Revenue Information Services.

The Three Step Registration process takes approximately eight working days to complete, but will only take a few minutes of your time. Applying to become a ROS customer is done online. However, for security reasons, the RAN (ROS Access Number) and ROS Password are sent separately by landmail to the registered address on Revenue records.

* A tax agent may file with ROS on behalf of a company. However, annual accounts submitted with an annual return to the Companies Office must be signed by the actual directors of the company. Therefore, while for revenue purposes, an agent may act, for CRO purposes, the Directors themselves require their own digital signing certificate.  

Retrieve Digital Certificate

Appendix 1

Application for Linked Sub Certificates

Once a company has registered for a Digital Signing certificate, ROS then has a specially designed access control facility, which allows an 'Administrator' (e.g. the Senior Partner or Financial Controller), in a company or business to request further digital certificates ‘sub -certs’ for other staff within their organisation and to grant access rights to these staff.

This control system is hosted on ROS but is maintained by the Administrator who can access the Admin Services Tab to apply for new sub certificates.

To apply for a sub cert on behalf of another person :

  • 1. Select Admin Services Tab
  • 2. Click Add New button
  • 3. Enter details which will generate an eMail to the new user
  • 4. Provide password to user by clicking on the system password icon
  • 5. User can download their new certificate by logging onto www.revenue.ie and retrieving the certificate by following the instructions under Option C in the picture above and entering the password.

All sub certs obtain the default permissions "View" only. The administrator can subsequently change these permissions for the individual if required after the certificate has been downloaded using the Revise button in the Admin Services.

Information Notice on the use of ROS (Revenue On-line Service) Digital Signature

The Companies Registration Office (CRO) has recently implemented an optional digital signing system for presenters on some of its electronic forms. Electronic Filing Agents and Company Officers can now sign submissions using a ROS (Revenue Online Services) electronic signature.

As part of the authentication provided to the CRO by the Revenue Commissioners under this system, a small number of data fields are exchanged, including a contact name, registered address and ROS Registration Number. These data fields are used by the CRO only for the purpose of confirming that the person proposing to digitally sign the CRO electronic form is the person duly registered and previously authenticated by Revenue.

The CRO stores this data solely to ensure that, should the need arise, the CRO could retrieve the time-stamped information to confirm that the CRO verified the signing details with the Revenue Commissioners.

The data exchanged with the Revenue Commissioners will be used for no other purpose.

The use of the ROS / digital signing system is optional and paper-based signing may be used in every case.

Please contact us should you require any further information on this initiative.

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