Job Retention Bonus postponed as CJRS extended again

The CJRS was originally extended until December 2 2020, but today (November 5) Sunak said “it’s clear the economic effects are much longer lasting for businesses than the duration of any restrictions, which is why we have decided to go further with our support.”

Employers will only be asked to contribute the employer National Insurance (NI) and pension contributions for any hours not worked, and the government will reimburse them for 80 percent of an employee’s salary, up to a cap of £2,500 per month.

The scheme will be reviewed in January 2021 to establish whether economic conditions have improved enough for employers to increase the level of their contributions.

Due to the fact that the CJRS has been extended, the Job Retention Bonus will now not be paid out in February, but a retention incentive will be redeployed at an appropriate time.

Businesses will be able to make claims for the CJRS either shortly before, during, or after running payroll, and claims can be made from 8am on Wednesday 11 November 2020. Businesses are advised that claims relating to November must be sent to HMRC by December 14 2020 at the very latest. Claims relating to each subsequent month must be submitted by the 14th of the following month.

Neither employer or employee has to have previously claimed, or have been claimed for, under the original CJRS in order to make a claim under the extension to the CJRS, where other eligibility criteria are met.

HMRC will publish details of the employers who make claims from December onwards under the extended scheme, and full details of this will be included in guidance which is due to be published next week.

The government has published a factsheet on the November 5 changes, as well as a new CJRS calculator.

The calculator is to be used for individual employees, for the claim period specified by the claimant. The calculator must be run separately for each employee being claimed for and then all of the results combined to arrive at the overall claim figure. The calculations are broken down for each individual pay period to help employers to maintain accurate records.