December deadlines and reminders for CJRS claims

9 December: ICAEW’s Tax Faculty shares a few reminders to consider when making claims for coronavirus job retention scheme grants during the holiday season.

Claims under the coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS) for November must be submitted no later than 14 December. Although payroll dates may differ for the Christmas period, claims can continue to be submitted before, during or after the payroll is processed, as long as the claim is submitted by the deadline.

HMRC will send reminder emails to employers before the deadline each month.

Employers should maintain records to support the amount of CJRS grant being claimed, in case HMRC needs to check them later.

CJRS cannot be used merely to pay for holiday leave

Employees can only be placed on furlough if an employer cannot maintain their workforce because their business has been affected by coronavirus, not just because they are on paid leave.

This also applies during any peak holiday periods in late December and early January. If an employee is flexibly furloughed, any time taken as holiday should be counted as furloughed hours rather than working hours.

If a furloughed employee takes holiday, their employer should pay them their normal rate of pay in line with the Working Time Regulations.

For more information see: Check if you can claim for your employees’ wages on gov.uk.

Notice periods

For claim periods from 1 December, employers cannot claim CJRS grants for any days that their employee is serving a contractual or statutory notice period, including notice of retirement or resignation.

More ICAEW support:

• Watch a recording of the webinar from the Tax Faculty outlining the latest version of the CJRS.
• Answers to real-life questions about the third version of the CJRS posed by attendees of the Tax Faculty’s webinar have been provided in TAXguide 17/20.
• Practical guidance from the Tax Faculty on how the CJRS changed from 1 November 2020.