The government has made a significant change to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in relation to Employee Eligibility and has provided more detail on using the online system and what is required before a claim can be made.
Employee eligibility
- you can now claim for employees that were employed as of 19 March 2020 and were on your PAYE payroll on or before that date. This means an RTI submission notifying payment in respect of that employee to HMRC must have been made on or before 19 March 2020.
- 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 the employer after that and prior to 19 March 2020, can also qualify for the scheme if the employer re-employs them and puts them on furlough.
- a Government Gateway ID and password. If you don’t already have an 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 are not registered yet, you can do so now, or by going to GOV.UK and searching for 'PAYE Online for employers'.
- agents authorised to act for you on PAYE matters can make the claim on your behalf using their ID and password
- you will need to tell your agent which UK bank account you want the grant to be paid into.
- The online claim service will be launched on GOV.UK on 20 April 2020and should not be accessed before then.
- Claims can only be made online
- Organisations can make the claim even if they usually use an agent
- Claims will be paid within 6 working days
- Queries directly from employees cannot be answered, they must come through the employer or agent.
- 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 using one of the following file types: .xls .xlsx .csv .ods.