Brief recap

The CJRS provides grants worth 80 per cent of a furloughed employee’s salary up to a cap of £2,500 a month, plus Employers’ National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and minimum employer auto-enrolment pension contributions. Furloughed employees are placed on temporary leave and may not carry out any work during the period of furlough. Any employee on your PAYE payroll on 28 February 2020 can be furloughed, including those who have subsequently left but who you are prepared to take back on. The scheme is backdated to 1 March 2020 and is in effect until the end of May, although the Government has said it will be extended if necessary. Please read our guide to the Job Retention Scheme, our employment FAQ’s and guide to furloughing Directors.

HMRC grant portal will open on Monday 20 April 2020

We have spoken to many of our clients about the process of furloughing employees and have assisted them with the paperwork and collation of data. If we have spoken to you already about the CJRS one of our team will be in touch with you within the next 6 days (by Wednesday 15 April) to discuss your claim. This will ensure that we have all of the information on hand to process claims as quickly as we can.

We understand that claims will be able to me made 14 days in advance of running a payroll and with a forecast 4-6 day payment period after the claim is submitted there is a chance that grants could be received before payroll payments are made.

The information that will be needed to make a claim will be:-

• Your PAYE reference number,
• Number of employees being furloughed,
• The claim period (start and end date)
• The bank account number and sort code you’d like the claim to be paid to.
• The name and phone number of the person HMRC should call if there are queries.
• Your Self-Assessment UTR or Company UTR
• The name, employee number and NI number for each furloughed employee
• The total amount being claimed for all employees in the period.

HMRC have indicated that they hope businesses will receive monies before the end of April and they are putting significant resources behind the portal. To assist, they have asked professional payroll advisers, like the team at Nicholsons, to help support them by supporting business owners calculate and made claims.