Government announces changes for who you can furlough and claim for.
You can only claim for furloughed employees that were on your PAYE payroll on or before 19 March 2020 and which were notified to HMRC on an RTI submission on or before 19 March 2020. 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.
The furlough scheme was originally due to end on 31 May 2020, this has however now been extended to 30 June 2020.
Employees can be on any type of employment contract, including full-time, part-time, agency, flexible or zero-hour contracts. Foreign nationals are eligible to be furloughed. Grants under the scheme are not counted as ‘access to public funds’, and you can furlough employees on all categories of visa.
Receiving a grant
To be eligible for the grant, when on furlough, an employee cannot undertake work for, or on behalf, of the organisation or any linked or associated organisation. This includes providing services or generating revenue. Employers are free to consider allocating any critical business tasks to staff that are not furloughed. While on furlough, the employee’s wage will be subject to the usual income tax and other deductions.
Legal obligations
We would also remind you that rather than just having to notify employees that they have been treated as furloughed, there should be written agreement. An email confirmation should be sufficient. So those employers who did not request written confirmation from the employees will need to address that urgently. Those who did will need to check their files to confirm that all relevant employees responded.
If you have any questions about this please contact us.
April 16th, 2020
