We recently emailed with details of a new Job Retention Scheme announced by the Government to support businesses and individuals through the Coronavirus pandemic. We have now received an update directly from HMRC on how and when the system can be accessed and further information on what you will need to have ready.
We're hoping this gives further insight on the amount of work that will be involved. Important changes to the scheme regarding 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 there will have already been an RTI submission notifying HMRC of payment of that employee on or before 19 March 2020. (i.e. the submission for 31 March including them). Employees that were employed as of 28 February 2020 and on payroll (i.e. notified to HMRC on an RTI submission on or before 28 February) and were made redundant or stopped working for you after that, but prior to 19 March 2020, can also qualify for the scheme if you re-employ them and put them on furlough. You can find more information on this directly here.
Making a claim
The online claim service will be launched on GOV.UK on 20 April 2020. Please understand that we will have a large volume of clients making claims. Claims will be paid within 6 working days, you should not contact HMRC unless absolutely necessary. If you have any queries you should use their online webchat service. HMRC can't answer any queries from your employees, they will have to come from you. Details needed to make a claim: - Names of each furloughed employee you will be claiming for - Claim period for each furloughed employee - Bank details of where you want the claim to be paid We are being told that this is not going to link to payroll information and every employee / director will need to be input manually to the HMRC website. We would imagine that monthly claims will be necessary as we don't know how long this will last. Claims can only be made a maximum of once every 3 weeks which will cause problems on weekly and fortnightly payrolls. We appreciate that clients are continuing to pay us as we continue to do the work for which we are paid. Although this will be a large amount of additional work, we will not be making any charge for this as our way of saying thank you for your support. We are doing our best to help everyone that wishes to make a claim, but please remember that this is going to be a timely and difficult period for us. Please ensure you have emailed payrolls@proren.co.uk with details of furloughed workers / directors. We will have no responsibility for claims where we have not been advised of furloughed details. We continue to wish you the best at this difficult time. Stay safe.
Read full newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/bd447ac0b96b/covid-19-job-retention-scheme-updates