COVID-19 news
CIPP’s coronavirus (COVID-19) hub THE CIPP’S hub, which contains information to help and guide payroll professionals through the pandemic, provides news, resources and links to internal and external resources. (https://bit. ly/3hOK9kR) Guidance is changing almost daily, so members should ensure they subscribe to the CIPP’s News Online email service in order to receive advice and updates as soon as available. The news/articles listed below have been recently reported in the hub and can be reached via the links shown. The online content itself contains links to GOV. UK guidance. ● Statutory residence test (SRT) – HMRC’s Residence, Domicile and Remittance Basis Manual provides guidance added in connection with the pandemic (page RDRM11005), and also ‘Annex D: International tax clarifications due to coronavirus (COVID 19) – Q&A’ (page RDRM13410). The guidance at RDRM11005, which confirms which circumstances are considered exceptional for the purposes CJRS statistics DATA FROM HMRC’s real time information (RTI) system is being matched with CJRS data to produce breakdowns of claims by employer size, sector, geography, age and gender. (https://bit.ly/3fVCTBQ) As at midnight 9 August, total jobs furloughed were 9,600,000; total number of employers furloughing was 1,200,000; and the total value of claims made was £34.7 billion. (https://bit.ly/33YPLEU) Key points from official statistics published on 15 July covering CJRS claims to 30 June 2020 (https://bit.ly/31T6sie) include the following: ● 9,400,000 employments had been Employees, claimants, vacancies FIGURES PUBLISHED by the Office for National Statistics on 11 August, reveal the following: ● early estimates for July 2020 from RTI indicate that the number of payroll employees fell by 2.5% (730,000) compared with March 2020
of the SRT, must be read alongside the guidance at RDRM13200. The maximum sixty days in a tax year that can be disregarded due to exceptional circumstances is still applicable. Annex D features seventeen commonly asked questions with answers that explain aspects of the temporary changes that are in place due to Covid-19. (https://bit. ly/3iBesv6) ● Statutory sick pay (SSP) – When someone in an employee’s support bubble (or extended household in Scotland or Wales) has coronavirus symptoms, payment of SSP is to start from the first qualifying day of the employee’s absence from work, as long as they are off for at least four days in a row. Waiting days do not have to be served. (https://bit. ly/3kHUKQc) ● Updates to the coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS) – Some recent changes to various guidance pages on the CJRS include: o supply teachers are eligible, and can be claimed for during any periods of school holiday, as long as the standard placed on furlough, an increase of 678,000 compared with claims made until the end of May ● 1,140,000 employers had made at least one CJRS claim, an increase of 75,000 over claims made to the end of May ● the total claimed was £26.5 billion at the end of June, representing an additional £9.0 billion in support claimed since the end of May ● employees of small and micro-sized employers were more likely to have been furloughed than those working for medium-sized and large employers: 57% of employments at employers with 5 to 9 ● the claimant count increased in July 2020, reaching 2.7 million; this includes both those working with low income or hours and those who are not working ● vacancies in the UK in the period May to July 2020 were at an estimated 370,000; this is 10% higher than the record low in
eligibility criteria are met (https://bit. ly/3asNBOT) o furloughed employees who are made redundant are to have their redundancy pay calculated on the basis of their normal wage, and not the reduced furlough amount (https://bit. ly/3asNBOT) o additional example advising claimants how to proceed where an employee with fixed pay has worked overtime in tax year 2019/20 to have a significant impact on the amount that can be claimed (https://bit.ly/3asNR0j). ● Job retention bonus – HMRC has published a policy paper which sets out details of which employers can claim, for which employees an employer can claim, and how employers can claim the bonus. More detail about how employers can claim the bonus will be published by the end of September 2020. (https://bit. ly/3fQ8YLe) ● CJRS claims – Guidance on what employers should do if they have claimed too much or not enough under the CJRS can be found here: https://bit.ly/3gV3IY8. employees had been furloughed against just 19% at employers with 250 or more employees ● by age, employees aged 17 were most likely to be furloughed; 61% of employments with a female employee aged 17 were furloughed, the equivalent figure for males was 58% ● across the age bands and by gender, employments with male employees aged 41 to 49 were least likely to be furloughed (28%), while for females, employments where the employees were aged 41 to 57 were the least likely to be furloughed (23%). the period April to June 2020. ● the three months to June 2020 saw strong falls in pay; total nominal pay fell by 1.2% on the year and regular nominal pay fell by 0.2% (the first negative pay growth in regular nominal earnings since records began in 2001).
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | September 2020 | Issue 63 16
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