Job Support Scheme (JSS)
Further clarifications were made to the scheme on 22nd October 2020. Now, the Government will be able to help businesses who are suffering from a business downturn due to coronavirus restrictions, or if they have been told to close temporarily. It has been separated into two provisions: JSS (Open) and JSS (Closed).
You can access the JSS (Open) if your employees work at least 20% of their normal working hours with you as a business covering the wages for those worked hours – rather than 33% as it was suggested before. For the hours not worked, you will be asked to contribute 5% of employees’ wages whilst the Government will contribute 61.67% of wages (for hours employees do not work), to a monetary cap of £1,541.75 per month per employee. This allows you to pay less towards employee’s wages for the hours they don’t work whilst the Government contribute more. The scheme will be open to small and medium-sized firms across the UK.
The expansion to the original JSS which was announced on 9th October is now being referred to as JSS (Closed). This portion of the scheme remains mostly unchanged. However, it was announced that if employers find that they have to close their business due to any kind of lockdown measures and their employees do not work for at least seven calendar days, the Government will pay two thirds of each employee’s salary, up to a maximum of £2,083.33 a month per employee. In this case, you will not be required to contribute towards staff wages but will have to cover National Insurance Contributions and pension contributions where necessary.
This scheme will still be available for employers from 1st November 2020 until 30th April 2021 regardless of whether they made use of the Job Retention Scheme or not. For an employee to be entered into either of the two versions of the JSS, they must have been on your PAYE payroll between 6th April 2019 and 23:59 on 23rd September 2020. This means that your client must make a Real Time Information (RTI) submission notifying payment to the employee to HMRC at some point between the above dates.
Claims can be made online from 8th December 2020 and reimbursement will be made on a monthly basis.
