Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - updated 15.4

[d000hg]

FWIW there have been some non-trivial amendments to this as of 15.4: Claim for your employees' wages through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - GOV.UK

Mainly relating to the dates for cut-offs.

We don't expect contractors really to benefit much but quite a few of us have partners or friends who could benefit and there's a lot of misinformation around so it's worth keeping abreast of all this IMO, as reasonably savvy people who run businesses and can help others.

[ladymuck]

Updates include...

...an important change to the scheme relating to employee eligibility:

• you can claim for employees that were employed as of 19 March 2020 and were on your PAYE payroll on or before that date; this means that you will have made an RTI submission notifying us of payment of that employee on or before 19 March 2020
• employees that were employed as of 28 February 2020 and on payroll (i.e. notified to us on an RTI submission on or before 28 February) and were made redundant or stopped working for you after that, and prior to 19 March 2020, can also qualify for the scheme if you re-employ them and put them on furlough.

More information on this can be found on GOV.UK.

How to claim
As you prepare to make a claim, please note:

• the online claim service will be launched on GOV.UK on 20 April 2020 – please do not try to access it before this date as it won’t be available
• the only way to make a claim is online – the service should be simple to use and any support you need available on GOV.UK; this will include help with calculating the amount you can claim
• you can make the claim yourself even if you usually use an agent
• claims will be paid within 6 working days; you should not contact us unless it is absolutely necessary – any queries should be directed to your agent, representative or our webchat service
• we cannot answer any queries from employees – they will need to raise these with you, as their employer, directly.

Information you will need before you make a claim
In addition to the information in our previous email, you will need to have the following before 20 April 2020:

• a Government Gateway (GG) ID and password – if you don’t already have a GG account, you can apply for one online, or by going to GOV.UK and searching for 'HMRC services: sign in or register'
• be enrolled for PAYE online – if you aren’t registered yet, you can do so now, or by going to GOV.UK and searching for 'PAYE Online for employers'
• the following information for each furloughed employee you will be claiming for:
  1. Name.
  2. National Insurance number.
  3. Claim period and claim amount.
  4. PAYE/employee number (optional).
• if you have fewer than 100 furloughed staff – you will need to input information directly into the system for each employee
• if you have 100 or more furloughed staff – you will need to upload a file with information for each employee; we will accept the following file types: .xls .xlsx .csv .ods.

[d000hg]

As far as I can tell, it's not really made difference to many unless they get paid weekly due to the RTI restriction.

Someone told me on a Facebook group for people hired since 28 Feb, people are being told by HMRC as long as they are being paid FOR March on PAYE they are entitled... but this is definitely not what the rules say. It's what the situation was on 19.3.

For now... I wouldn't be surprised if they relax that. Hopefully - we hired our first employee on 1.3 but were not sorted for PAYE/RTI until month-end.

[Robinho]

I'm pretty furious about this policy.

It's basically rewarding people who are lucky enough to keep their jobs with a nice paid holiday at the taxpayers expense.