The Job Retention Bonus – Further Guidance Released

As part of his ‘Plan for Jobs’ announced back in July, Rishi Sunak unveiled the Job Retention Bonus Scheme.

Further guidance has now been released confirming that the online portal to facilitate claims will be open from 15^th February 2021 to 31^st March 2021. The guidance will be updated before the end of January 2021 with details of how to access the online claim service.

What is it?

The Job Retention Bonus is a £1,000 one-off taxable payment to your business. You can claim this for each eligible employee that you furloughed and kept continuously employed until 31 January 2021. You do not have to pay this money to your employee.

Will directors of Personal Service Companies be able to make a claim?

The guidance confirms that you can claim a Job Retention Bonus for office holders (like company directors) provided you meet all the eligibility criteria. To be eligible for the Job Retention Bonus you must:

• Have made a successful claim that you were eligible to make through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
• The person for which you made the successful claim under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme must remain continuously employed from the end of the last claim period until 31 January 2021.
• This person must have been paid a minimum of £1,560 as gross salary from 6^th November 2020 to 5^th February 2021, and they must have been paid at least once per month. An average of £520 per month for November, December and January.

HMRC will look at your PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) Submissions to confirm this, so it is vital that you ensure these are up to date before submitting a claim. If you are a client and you have a salary in place, we will be doing this for you.

Can you make the claim on my behalf?

If we are your authorised agents for PAYE, we will be able to make the claim on your behalf once the portal opens on 15^th February 2020, we will know more about how this will work when the government releases this guidance in January 2021.

Tax treatment of the Job Retention Bonus

As with grants received under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), the Job Retention Bonus is taxable. This means the payments you receive under the scheme will be included as income when calculating taxable profits for corporation tax purposes.

How will this interact with the Job Support Scheme?

The recently announced Job Support Scheme has no impact on the Job Retention Bonus and if you are eligible for both you can claim both. You can find more information on the Job Support Scheme here.

You can find further information on eligibility for the Job Retention Bonus here.