What you need to do from 1 October

From 1‌‌ October, HMRC will pay 60% of usual wages up to a cap of £1,875 per month for the hours furloughed employees do not work.  

What you need to do from 1‌‌ October

Continue to pay furloughed employees at least 80% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work, up to a cap of £2,500 per month. Employers will need to fund the difference between this and the CJRS grant themselves.

The caps are proportional to the hours not worked. For example, if an employee is furloughed for half their usual hours in October, employers are entitled to claim 60% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work, up to £937.50 (half of £1,875 cap). Employers must still pay their employees at least 80% of their usual wages for the hours they don’t work, so for someone only working half their usual hours they’d need to pay them up to £1,250 (half of £2,500 cap), funding the remaining portion themselves. Complicate huh? Try this link instead

You will also continue to pay furloughed employees’ National Insurance and pension contributions from your own funds. 

Make sure your data is right

It’s important that you provide all the data HMRC need to process claims. Payment of grants may be at risk or delayed if you submit a claim that is incomplete or incorrect. HMRC will get in touch if they see any employee data missing from previous claims.

Claiming for 100 or more employees – use the new template

The easiest way for you to provide HMRC with the data they need is to use the updated template

To help prevent mistakes, the XLS and XLMS versions of the template now highlight any missing information needed to make a claim before you submit it. Where information is missing, fields will be red and once the missing information is filled in, the data fields will turn green. Employers can also now flag if an employee has recently returned from statutory leave, to ensure claims with any new employees are processed correctly.

Claimed too much in error?

It’s important that you continue to check each claim is accurate before submitting it, and HMRC also recommend checking previous claims to avoid any penalties for claiming too much.

If you have claimed too much CJRS grant and have not repaid it, you must notify them and repay the money by the latest of whichever date applies below:

• 90 days from receiving the CJRS money you or your client are not entitled to
• 90 days from the point circumstances changed so that you or your client were no longer entitled to keep the CJRS grant
• 20‌‌ October 2020, if on or before 22 July you or your client received CJRS money you’re not entitled to, or if circumstances changed. 

If you do not do this, you may have to pay interest and a penalty as well as repaying the excess CJRS grant.

How to let HMRC know if you have claimed too much

You can let them know as part of your next online claim without needing to call – the system will prompt you to add details if you have received too much. If you have claimed too much and do not plan to submit further claims, you can let HMRC know and find out how to make a repayment online.

Alternatively, let us look after your payroll, furlough and HMRC submission or offer you guidance on how to manage this best – it’s what we do.