COVID-19 Emergency Measures (02.11.2020)
Extension and changes to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
On the 31st October 2020 the Prime Minister announced an extension to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (Furlough Scheme) available to employers and will remain open until December.
Previously, staff must have been employed from March 2020, however the extended scheme allows claims for staff who have been on payroll since October 2020 so you may find you are now eligible where in the past you were not.
The new scheme is more generous and for hours not worked by the employee, the government will pay 80% of wages up to a cap of £2,500. The grant must be paid to the employee in full. This is similar to what the Furlough scheme was up to August 2020.
Employers will pay employer NICs and pension contributions and should continue to pay the employee for hours worked in the normal way. Employers may choose to “top up” wages if they wish. Flexible furloughing is still permitted.
Who is eligible?
Employers
All employers with a UK bank account and UK PAYE schemes can claim the grant. Neither the employer nor the employee needs to have previously used the CJRS.
The government expects that publicly funded organisations will not use the scheme, as has already been the case for CJRS, but partially publicly funded organisations may be eligible where their private revenues have been disrupted. All other eligibility requirements apply to these employers.
Employees
• To be eligible to be claimed for under this extension, employees must be on an employer’s PAYE payroll by 23:59 30th October 2020. This means a Real Time Information (RTI) submission notifying payment for that employee to HMRC must have been made on or before 30th October 2020.
As under the current CJRS rules:
• Employees can be on any type of contract. Employers will be able to agree any working arrangements with employees.
• Employers can claim the grant for the hours their employees are not working, calculated by reference to their usual hours worked in a claim period. Such calculations will broadly follow the same methodology as currently under the CJRS.
• When claiming the CJRS grant for furloughed hours, employers will need to report and claim for a minimum period of 7 consecutive calendar days.
• Employers will need to report hours worked and the usual hours an employee would be expected to work in a claim period.
• For worked hours, employees will be paid by their employer subject to their employment contract and employers will be responsible for paying the tax and NICs due on those amounts.
If you need assistance processing furlough claims please get in touch with payroll@fwdaccounts.co.uk and we would be happy to help.
You can find more information here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/furlough-scheme-extended-and-further-economic-support-announced
Additional grants for businesses who pay rates
The government intends to provide further grants to those businesses required to close because of COVID-19. A brief outline of the intentions are as follows, there is no further information on timescales available at the time of writing.
As per the previous round of grants, these are targeted at businesses who pay business rates on properties.
• For properties with a rateable value of £15k or under, grants to be £1,334 per month, or £667 per two weeks;
• For properties with a rateable value of between £15k-£51k grants to be £2,000 per month, or £1,000 per two weeks;
• For properties with a rateable value of £51k or over grants to be £3,000 per month, or £1,500 per two weeks.
More details can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/furlough-scheme-extended-and-further-economic-support-announced
Self employed grant extension
The government has announced additional grants for those that were elegible for the first and second “Self-Employment Income Support Scheme” or SEISS regardless of if they previously claimed. The criteria is that your business must be trading but there is reduced demand because of Coronavirus or you were previously trading but are temporarily unable to do so.
The first grant will cover a three-month period from 1 November 2020 until 31 January 2021. The Government will provide a taxable grant covering 40% of average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering 3 months’ worth of profits, and capped at £3,750 in total.
The second grant will cover a three-month period from 1 February 2021 until 30 April 2021. The Government will review the level of the second grant and set this in due course.
The grants are taxable income and also subject to National Insurance contributions as per all previous grants.
The online service for the next grant will be available from 14 December 2020, unfortunately we are unable to assist with this as it must be completed by the individual claiming.
More details can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/self-employment-income-support-scheme-grant-extension/self-employment-income-support-scheme-grant-extension