We’ve received lots of enquiries about last week’s changes to the scheme on eligibility, scheme length and calculations. We now also have information on how to make a claim.
Duration
The government extended the scheme, for a further month, ending 30th June unless further changes are made.
Eligibility:
To be eligible under the scheme employees need to:
- Have been on PAYE payroll on or before 19th March 2020 AND
- Have been notified to HMRC on a Real Time Information system (RTI) on or before 19th March 2020.
This means the fact that the employee has commenced employment by 19 March (rather than the previously published date of 28th February) is not sufficient on its own, they must have been included in an RTI submission notifying payment in respect of that employee to HMRC on or before 19 March.
We urge you to speak to your accountant or payroll provider if you are unclear when your last RTI submission was made.
Guide to Claiming
HMRC have released a step by step guide how to claim your employees’ wages. The same information is reflected on their web pages, in particular you may be interested in the following :
This calculator is a useful tool to work out the amount – it will work for most employees who are paid the same amount each pay period (for example, weekly or monthly). It looks as though HMRC will be adding more complex calculations as time goes on.
Claim Portal
The claim portal is now open. You can make your claim in anticipation of an imminent payroll run, at the point you run your payroll or after you have run your payroll. This means you can include any payments for April in your claim now, even if your pay date isn’t until the end of the month. Claims can be backdated from 1 March 2020 where employees have already been furloughed from that date. A claim cannot start any earlier than the date the employee was first furloughed. Please remember HMRC are indicating it takes 6 working days for them to pay you the money, your accountant/ payroll administrator should be able to do this for you.
You will need to have all your information and calculations ready before you begin your application and you should retain all records and calculations in case HRMC need to contact you about them.
General Points
Please remember that if you are furloughing staff then you must issue them with a letter confirming the change in their status, that they are not to undertake any work for you (although training is encouraged) and seeking their agreement. You can find template letters to start and end a furlough period on our website.
What’s Next?
We would advise that you now begin to take a longer term view of your business, adapting your current business plan where necessary and as a result considering your people planning. We will be putting together some useful people planning tools over the next few days to support this and will be in touch with more information when they are ready.
Do get in touch if you have any queries at all.