Find out how you could get a bonus for keeping furloughed employees.
What is it?
The Government announced that as a one off bonus to employers, they can claim £1,000 for every employee who they had furloughed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), and who is kept employed until January 2021.
This Job Retention Bonus (JRB) is taxable as income for the employer.
The JRB can be claimed for employees, officeholders, agency workers and irectors.
To be eligible you have to fulfill certain criteria.
What are the criteria?
To be eligible the following must be true:
- The employee was furloughed and had a CJRS claim submitted for them
- The employee must remain employed until the 31st January 2021
- Eligible employees must earn an average of at least £520 a month between the 1st November 2020 and the 21st January 2021, reported under Real-Time Information (RTI)
- The employee must not be serving their contractual or statutory notice period for the employer during this time.
Further criteria for the employer include:
- Complying with obligations to pay and file PAYE accurately and on time under the RTI reporting system for all employees
- You must have maintained enrollment for PAYE online
- The employer must have a UK bank account
Employers will be able to claim for the JRB after they have filled PAYE for January 2021, and payments will be made to employers from February 2021.
HMRC requires that employers keep their employee records up to date, and report them to HMRC accurately through the RTI system.
If the CJRS was claimed incorrectly for an employee then you won’t be able to claim the Job retention Bonus.