Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is a temporary scheme open to all UK employers for at least three months starting from 1 March 2020. It is designed to support employers whose operations have been severely affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Employers can use a portal to claim for 80% of furloughed employees' (employees on a leave of absence) usual monthly wage costs, up to £2,500 a month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions on that wage. Employers can use this scheme anytime during this period.
The scheme is open to all UK employers that had created and started a PAYE payroll scheme on 28 February 2020.
This scheme pays a grant (not a loan) to the employer. This will be paid via an online system currently being made. Click here for further details.
We are awaiting full details of how the scheme will operate from HMRC, including for directors paid via PAYE but not receiving a consistent, regular monthly salary. We understand the intention of the scheme is to include those on irregular earnings, but full details on how the amount of the grant will be calculated for these individuals have yet to be released.
As with other businesses, such directors would need to have been on the payroll on 28 February 2020 and they cannot work while they are on furlough leave.
We do not yet know the extent to which minor directorial duties would be disregarded, or whether the requirement that a furloughed employee should do 'no work' would prohibit this.