We have now been provided with an update from HMRC surrounding the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and are now able to share some more details with you on how the scheme will operate and how claims can be made.
Guidance on the scheme has previously been sent by email and many of you have contacted us since to clarify around the specifics of your business. Please note that for those still unaware, Directors CAN be furloughed as long as they are not continuing to work. They are still permitted to keep up with their statutory duties in accordance with the Companies Act (Filing accounts etc).
How to make a claim?
An online portal will be introduced by 20thApril 2020 to allow the grants to be claimed.
If we prepare your payroll and hold agent authorisation to act on your behalf, HMRC have confirmed that we will be able to access the portal and claim the grant as your agent. Any clients who we do the payroll for but have been unable to obtain agent authorisation (filing only service) will be contacted separately.
Information Request
Due to the vast number of claims we will be processing for our clients, can we please ask that all those wishing to make a claim fill out our form which can be obtained from the office via email. Most of this will be information that we hold however if you can collate this for us it will allow us to complete all claims as quickly as possible. One line per employee containing Name, NI number, the date they stopped working and their average weekly gross pay. For those employees who are salaried monthly please multiply up the monthly salary by 12 and divide by 52 to give the weekly equivalent. If you are also able to provide the same average for Employers national insurance and Employers pension contributions where applicable this will further speed up the claim. You’ll find this information on any payslips or payroll reports sent across by Racheal or Jan. If you cannot figure it out, leave it blank.
**In addition to the template, we also need your business bank account details as the claim will be paid direct to you from HMRC**
Returned templates will be the first to be processed before we begin to work through the remainder even if it is just one single director being furloughed.
It is important that if further employees are furloughed after this submission to us you must update us as it happens, similarly when employees are taken off furlough please notify us as soon as possible. If HMRC require multiple submissions, we will continue to submit on the basis provided until notified otherwise. That way we don’t have to continually be verifying information. The responsibility is on you the client to keep us up to date with changes.
Apologies to those clients who have already provided some or all of this information but if you can provide it again in this format it will ensure there are no omissions.
We will do our best to keep you up to date by email with any further developments.
