COVID-19 news
CJRS extended IN DECEMBER, the chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward from January the planned review of the employer contribution element of the coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS), and announced that: ● the CJRS is extended to the end of April 2021, and ● the grants under the CJRS will be at 80% of the salaries of employees for hours not worked until the end of April. Employers are required to pay secondary (employer) National Insurance contributions and minimum auto-enrolment contributions for hours not worked. The eligibility criteria for the UK-wide CJRS remain unchanged, and the changes will continue to apply to all the devolved administrations. The extension of the CJRS from end of March until end of April gives employers certainty ahead of the 45-day redundancy notice period, with the Budget (to be held on 3 March 2021) setting out the next phase of support more than 45 days before the new end date.(http:// bit.ly/3hsrhsh) Test and trace support payments THE SOCIAL Security Contributions (Disregarded Payments) (Coronavirus) (Scotland and Wales) Regulations 2020, which came into force on 5 January, introduce a class 1 and class 1A NICs exemption for payments made under the Self-Isolation Support Grant and the Self- Isolation Support Payment schemes in, respectively, Scotland and Wales. (A similar scheme was introduced in England in September.) The schemes are designed to help employees on low incomes who have been asked to self-isolate by either Scotland’s Test and Protect Service or Wales’s NHS Wales Test, Trace, Protect service, cannot work from home and will suffer financial consequences as a result. The exemptions ensure that the payments are not subject to NICs to prevent administrative costs from arising on the local authorities administering the schemes. (http://bit.ly/3mXmrUZ) Recent statistics THE LATEST release of the Office of National Statistics’ (ONS’s) estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment-related statistics for the UK – Labour market overview, UK: December 2020 (http://bit.ly/2KDldRV) – reveals that: ● the number of payroll employees has fallen by 819,000 since February 2020, with early estimates indicating that in November 2020 the number of payrolled employees fell by 2.7% compared with November 2019, a fall of 781,000 employees ● the number of redundancies reached a record high of 370,000 in the three months to October 2020, an increase of 217,000 on the quarter, although the number of redundancies fell slightly in October 2020. Wave 20 of the ONS’s Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (http://bit.ly/38MyQ9h), reveals that: ● 85% of UK businesses are currently trading, an increase from 80% in the previous wave ● of all businesses, excluding those that have permanently ceased trading, 11% of their workforce are on furlough leave, down from 16% in the prior wave ● in the week ending 18 December 2020, there were: ❍ 4,893 company voluntary dissolution applications, a decrease from 5,279 in the previous week and lower than seen in the corresponding period of 2019 (6,217), and ❍ 13,257 company incorporations, down from 15,766 in the previous week but higher than the corresponding figure for the same period in 2019 (11,503) ● in the week ending 20 December 2020, the proportion of working adults in Great Britain who: ❍ worked exclusively from home, remained the same compared with the previous week at 28% ❍ travelled to work (both exclusively and in combination with working from home), remained broadly unchanged compared with the previous week at 57% ❍ neither travelled to work nor worked from home, remained unchanged at 15%. HMRC to publish CJRS claims FROM FEBRUARY, HMRC will publish information about employers that make claims under the CJRS for periods starting on or after 1 December 2020. The information published on GOV.UK comprises: ● the employer name ● an indication of the value of the claim within a banded range, and ● the company number for companies and limited liability partnerships. However, HMRC will not publish details of employers claiming through the scheme if they can show that publicising these would result in a serious risk of violence or intimidation to certain relevant individuals, or any individual living with them. Also, from February, HMRC will be improving the information available to furloughed employees by including details of claims made for them, for claim periods starting on or after 1 December 2020, in their personal tax account on GOV.UK. (http://bit.ly/38a6VQg) Reimbursing costs of swab tests HMRC HAS announced that payments an employer makes on or after 25 January 2021 until 5 April 2021 to reimburse an employee for the cost of a relevant coronavirus antigen test can be disregarded for both income tax and NICs. (A ‘test’ is one which can detect the presence of a viral antigen or viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) specific to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)). For any relevant advance payments or reimbursements which have been made during the 2020/21 tax year, but before the measure comes into force, HMRC will refrain from collecting any NICs or income tax due on such reimbursement provided the conditions set out in the legislation are met. (http://bit.ly/3hrOk6F)
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | February 2021 | Issue 67 18
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